N7 Rejects: 004 – Assembly
by N7Dante
Summary: Assigned to rescue another N7 squad from a geth-infested area on Cyone, the rejects infiltrate an abandoned reactor and encounter an even greater threat. Scott tries to outscore the team, Rebecca does something very embarrassing, Tessia has a breakdown, and Tullius proves that turians can roll.
1. Foreword

**Foreword and notes**

 *** Disclaimer type thing**

Although the original characters and scenarios belong to me, this is a fanfic based in the universe of the game series 'Mass Effect', which is most certainly owned by the brilliant developers at Bioware and, to some extent, those publishing guys at Electronic Arts.

 *** Notes for this story**

004: Pretty much continues straight on from the last story, although the very first scene could have happened a bit earlier, shortly after Scott and Becky were teamed up with Tess and Tullius.

I had two separate plot ideas ages back, but then decided to merge them into this one bigger story with longer chapters. Enjoy!

 *** Extra babble**

I started writing part 4 of N7 Rejects roughly two years ago and I've taken so long tweaking the last few chapters that the long-awaited 'ME: Andromeda' got released. Still find it kind of spooky that Bioware chose Scott as the first name for their male lead and that there are a lot of other character similarities to my Scott. Thinking about it, the name of my third story was 'Remnants' and the new game has a 'race' dubbed as such, plus every time they mention overclocking omni-tools it reminds me of my first story. Is Bioware reading my stuff? Doubtful, probably all just coincidences.

 *** Special thanks**

ramsay – simply for taking the time to comment about the laugh they got out of my last story.


	2. Chapter 1 – Love and the outlines

**N7 Rejects 004: Assembly**

 **Chapter 1 – Love and the outlines**

[Year: 2186]  
[Location: Communications Room, The Defiant, Skepsis System]

The operatives aboard the Systems Alliance's frigate ship Defiant had gathered in the comms room, all quietly watching the recorded transmission that had been sent to every available Alliance base of operations.

The blue flickering full-body hologram of Admiral Steven Hackett had recapped the latest Reaper movements and outlined the future 'N7 Operations'.

Scott had zoned out with a ridiculous grin on his face before refocusing on Hackett's last words; "These critical and extremely dangerous operations in each region will be priority. Each squad will be given the full details by their commander. I thank each and every one of you for your efforts. Together, we stand a chance. Good luck. Hackett out."

The hologram vanished with a blip and the various teams split off to discuss what they had just heard.

Scott stood between Rebecca and Tessia and wrapped his arms around their shoulders as if posing for a photograph; "Ohh yeeeeeah!"

Releasing them and then striding forward, he turned back towards them; "After all this time, all these trails, we finally made it! N7 baby!"

Rebecca glanced to the floor; "Well, technically, you and I are still at the N3 rank."

"Uh-uuuuhhh," retorted Scott shaking his head, "Hackett said so."

Tessia was enjoying Scott's excitement, but also felt that he likely didn't pay full attention to the wide-spread briefing and was in need of an explanation; "It's a temporary, unofficial, in name-only set of operations due to the galaxy-wide war against an almost unstoppable enemy."

Scott's brow furrowed; "Hey, if 'The Beard' says I'm N7, I'm N7."

Tullius stepped in, crossing his arms; "How else would you explain the likes of vorcha, krogan and even the odd volus, with little to no training or experience, instantly becoming the highest grade in your system's special forces? Tessia and I aren't even part of your military hierarchy and yet have now also been named N7."

Scott placed an index finger from each hand into his ears; "I'm not listening, la-la-la-laaaa!"

Although a shared dream between the two humans, Rebecca took one of Scott's hands and looked into his eyes as he turned; "Hackett said this himself, you just got yourself too giddy to listen to everything. It's alright though, in a way, it still all means something. We deserve this, we've come a long way…"

Scott returned her gaze and, while lost in her green eyes for a couple of fleeting seconds, he understood everything.

There was hope, concern, annoyance, happiness, sadness, and a hint of something that he hadn't truly felt since his childhood days when he loudly screamed out his goals in the Arcturus Station library.

Trying to achieve the true rank of N7 seemed almost meaningless now when the entire galaxy was working together against such an immense threat. The responsibilities, importance, and recognition were now to be shared between everyone who would desire to make a difference. People were fighting, helping, dying…

He was still 'someone' that could make things better, he didn't have to prove himself, he just had to do the best that he could in the time that he had.

Scott nodded and then smiled; "Close enough, right?"

"Yeah," smiled Rebecca.

.***

[Location: Messroom, The Defiant, Kypladon System, Silean Nebula]

"No," stated a dungaree-clad Rebecca waving a metal fork at Scott, "it's not a good idea at all."

Scott was sat across from his teammate in the otherwise empty cafeteria of the Defiant, swallowing the last of a substance that he once described as 'a food not entirely unlike mash potato' from the plate on his tray.

He pouted, sticking his bottom lip out and pulling at the strings of his black hoodie; "But she is so hot and I've never done it with an asari before. I hear it's amazing."

"One," started Rebecca putting the fork down, "although I consider her a friend, she's not exactly the most stable person to form a relationship with, it's probably quite dangerous."

"I'm not after a relationship, I just wanna do that sexy mind-meldy thing with her."

"Two, you're a pleasure-obsessed jerk," Rebecca inserted into her Dodson-like dialogue after hearing that, "and three, the entire galaxy is at war, it's not wise to complicate things with your own teammates… I should know."

Scott's eyes widened in realisation and Rebecca suddenly wished that she hadn't added those last few words in the heat of the moment. She was normally exceptional at hiding her own feelings, but this particular exchange let her mask slip.

Her mind raced, he was bound to start asking questions, should she confess the true feelings that she had been holding onto for so many years, or should she heed her own advice and deflect the statement in some way?

She could see it in his eyes, he knew her feelings about him now, and there was little way she could get out of this without revealing everything.

The man stood up and pointed at her with a gasp; "You fancy Tess too!"

Rebecca had to slam both of her hands on the table to steady herself as her sudden surprise at his denseness almost made her fall off her chair; "I do not!"

"I know asari aren't technically either female or male, but I didn't think 'bout you going after her as well," considered Scott seriously, staring off into space, "I should have know when you agreed about how attractive she was when we first met her."

Rebecca turned a bright shade of red as a particular image entered her mind; "I, I don't fancy Tess!"

Scott then jumped to the only other 'obvious' conclusion, hands clenched together in concern; "Tu- Tullius?! But humans can't get with turians!"

This time Rebecca's forehead hit the table surface as another image popped into her head; "Bah-lala-de-gah!"

"The truth has broken Becky's brain," commented Scott, "she must have fallen for him after hearing him talk so much, all girls melt when hearing the voice of a turian."

There was a pause in their 'comic routine' as something completely different entered Rebecca's mind. She didn't really want to use it as a distraction from her secret, but it would highlight the point she was originally making.

"Connor," muttered the young woman as she slowly raised her head.

Scott was suddenly quiet.

"I spoke with Takako this morning," said Rebecca dejectedly, recalling her video-call to the Rio de Janeiro base on Earth, "she's… getting worse… she's really changed."

"Bex…"

Rebecca laughed at the tears abruptly welling up in her eyes; "This is so silly. We're at war, and I just, I just don't want any of us to die. Why… why can't…"

"Takako is alive because of Connor," replied Scott, walking around to put a hand on her shoulder as she sat rubbing her eyes, "Conn saw a chance to save her and made his decision. If he knew it was gonna lead to his death, he still would have done it, he followed his heart. Yeah, love or simple attraction can make things complicated or hurtful on the field, but sometimes, especially with what's happening right now, it can be a comfort and make you stronger."

Rebecca's wiped away her tears and a surge of confidence sprung up inside her at his surprising words; "Scott, I need to tell you something…"

"Hmm?" pondered Scott looking down to her.

"I…"

The doors to the cafeteria opened and Tessia walked in, wearing her full combat gear; "Hey guys!"

The asari's entrance instantly quelled Rebecca's plan, but the following doubt and paranoia in her mind caused her to actually feel glad that she was interrupted.

Scott's warm hand left his fellow human's shoulder as he ran it through his own short blond hair and flashed a smile; "Hey there, how you doing?"

Tessia bounced over to them with a quick jog and a hop like an excited child; "Come on, get suited up and come to the hanger, we have a super important mission!"

"Sure thing blue," smiled Scott.

"Great!" cheered Tessia with enthusiasm for the assignment, "See you there!"

As the asari skipped off, Scott began to slowly walk after her, but then paused and turned back around on the spot as he remembered something; "Wait, Bex, what were you gonna say?"

The young woman stood up from her chair, her hands in the pockets of her dungarees to nervously fondle some loose washers, screws and bolts; "Ah, nothing, it doesn't matter."

"Narh, come on," attempted Scott curiously.

"I'll tell you after the mission," said Rebecca, knowing in her own mind that she was unlikely to do so and hoping that it would be a forgotten topic by the time they got back.

Scott, believing that it was completely in connection with her worry over the possible deaths of her teammates, simply gave her the thumbs up and added; "No worries, we'll all be fine, let's go."

.***

The two humans were now in their combat armour, sans helmets, while they listened to Tullius outline the current mission.

The turian's voice echoed around the hanger; "I've been briefed by commander Whitehall personally. This mission is of utmost importance and will undoubtedly be extremely dangerous…"

During this introduction, Scott sat on a nearby crate and gained Rebecca's attention with a cough. She quietly watched as he nodded to her and then to Tullius before waggling his eyebrows and sticking his tongue out suggestively in reference to their earlier conversation.

Rebecca simply replied with an unimpressed glare and a subtly raised middle finger, much to Scott's amusement.

"Lawton," said Tullius in a plain tone.

Scott froze for a second and then looked over to his squad leader; "Err, um, yes?"

The human suddenly felt like he was back in school, getting caught out by the teacher during the beginnings of a prank.

"Problem?" asked the leader, not hinting to any type of emotion.

"N-No sir, just, um, admiring your voice."

Tessia giggled while Rebecca simply cringed for Scott's sake.

"Well then," replied the turian, "you'll be happy to know that if we require to split-up during the mission, you'll be with me and hearing my voice a lot more often."

Tessia held her hand up to confirm her understanding; "To balance the biotic and technical abilities across the two groups, right?"

"That," answered Tullius, "and the fact that Lawton is a pain in the ass and needs his hand holding."

"Oooo, you got told off," teased Rebecca, amused at Tullius' reply.

The turian shot her a look that spent a shiver down her spine.

The young woman glanced back down to the floor; "Sorry, I don't normally blurt things out like that."

"I know…" sighed the team leader glancing to Scott, the prime suspect for a bad influence in the group, "anyway, moving on."

As Tullius raised his arm to tap a command on his omni-tool, the three others activated their own tools, knowing that they would be receiving a mission statement.

The data burst contained small profiles and images of an Alliance Team none of them recognized, along with various maps, coordinates, and interface information.

"They're commonly known as the Retrieval Squad," explained Tullius, "two soldiers and two engineers that excel in recovering enemy data and artefacts."

"Whaaaattt?" frowned Scott, "They can't be that good, they haven't even got one infiltrator on their team."

Rebecca had already speed-read ahead after expanding the squad's mission history; "Seems they don't need one. The two soldiers are at the top of their field and use brute force to get what they want while receiving tactical and tech support from the other two."

"They have reclaimed many stolen assets," added Tullius, "and appropriated new weapon systems that have been added to our arsenal for the war cause. Just recently they even discovered intel suggesting that the collectors weren't completely destroyed and will soon be making a return from dark space."

"Whoa, the collectors," responded Tessia, clearly eager in the knowledge that one day she could possibly face off against such a 'mythical' enemy.

"We… found out…" Scott paused for a second trying to remember any recent achievements, "about project Phoenix!"

"And blew up the base," added Tessia.

"And blew up the base," repeated Scott proudly.

"You weren't supposed to blow up the base," grumbled Tullius.

"Ahh, details," said Scott closing his eyes and waving his hand to dismiss the comment.

"If I may proceed with the briefing?" the turian asked, looking to each of his three teammates.

"Proceed," said Scott with a put-on royal voice, as if granting his leader permission to carry on.

Rebecca cringed again at Scott's insolence, but it seemed as though Tullius allowed it.

"Retrieval Squad were sent on a mission to planet Cyone to investigate reports of a strange alien artefact," Tullius informed, "apparently they found it, but they also discovered a heavy amount of geth activity in the area. Command then lost contact with the team... Our mission is to investigate what happened and, if possible, bring back the squad and the artefact. Any questions?"

"So…" started Scott with a smirk, "we're going in, to retrieve the Retrieval Squad?"

"Yes," replied Tullius plainly, ignoring the human's amusement.

"Isn't Cyone an asari planet?" asked Rebecca.

"Oh! Really?!" exclaimed Scott quickly looking through data on his omni-tool.

Tessia answered this one and added her own question; "Yes, and the task forces are quite proud of their ability to constantly repel invading forces. How did all these geth get past them?"

Tullius remembered reading up on various other reports concerning the planet; "From what I can gather, they have had their hands full defending various key locations scattered far away from our drop zone."

Scott shrugged; "Ahh, it'd be too easy if we had help from the locals anyway."

"I wouldn't mind some ease for a change," sighed Rebecca.

Tessia rotated her right wrist and then clenched her fist; "I'd enjoy a challenge."

"Feh," chuckled Scott, "it'll be a walk in the park, we're N7, we're pro."

"Hi guys," called out a figure now stood next to Scott.

"Yaaarrrhhh!" cried out Scott in surprise, falling off the crate he was sat on, "How'd you sneak up on me?"

"So pro," teased Tessia who then waved to the figure, "hi Kevin."

Kevin, one of the drop-shuttle pilots, waved back to Tessia and then helped Scott up off the ground; "Looks like I'm with you guys again. It's an extraction mission right?"

"Yes," replied Tullius, "we'll be relying on you for one of your well-known quick evacs once we have secured the objective."

The pilot held a thumb up against his chest; "I'll do my best sir, don't you worry, I'll get you out of there when the time comes."

"Good to hear," said Tullius closing his omni-tool, "let's get to it then."

.***


	3. Chapter 2 – The geth gauntlet

**Chapter 2 – The Geth Gauntlet**

[Location: Planet Cyone, Kypladon System, Silean Nebula]  
[Mission Brief: Investigate fate of missing team, retrieve artefact]

The squad watched as the Alliance Kodiak drop shuttle flew away. It skimmed barely two metres from the surface, using the same low-flying method as when it first broke through the atmosphere.

The idea was to avoid as much radar detection as possible and drop the squad off a fair distance away from the last known location of the Retrieval Squad.

"I know we're trying to be stealthy and everything," commented Rebecca, her voice directly reaching the other three team members via the mic in her helmet, "but Kev's not stashing the Kodiak too far away right?"

Tullius consulted his omni-tool for a moment; "It is best for our main method of escape to be secure rather than risk it near the combat zone, especially since one highly skilled squad has already gone missing. Carrying on with the theme of caution, can you scout that ridge over there before we scramble down it?"

"Ryoukai," replied Rebecca, confirming the order in Japanese like Takako always used to.

After dancing her fingers across her omni-tool, her tactical drone materialised a metre away with a digital barking sound emanating from it.

The engineer suddenly froze and could feel her face turning red; "Ooh, that's embarrassing."

A wide smile ran across Scott's face; "You made it so Fido can bark?! That's awesome!"

"So cute," beamed Tessia, bending over (much to Scott's delight) to pet the drone like it was a real dog.

Tullius didn't seem as impressed; "Not exactly covert, is it?"

Rebecca quickly tapped a few commands on her tool; "Sorry, a little mod I made for fun, I forgot I left it on. It should stop after this cycle."

There was an awkward pause as the drone slowly began to hover away in 'scout' mode, making quiet sniffing sounds along the way.

Scott looked towards Rebecca and waved his hands about; "If it comes back with a geth arm in it's mouth for a game of fetch, I'm gonna freak, ok?"

Rebecca pictured such an impossible scene and tried to hide her amusement in front of their leader.

Tullius detached his M-92 Mantis sniper rifle; "We're taking this one slow. Fan out but do not approach the ridge. I also want another weapons check while we wait..."

The area the squad found themselves in was fairly bare, with worn-away grass fields surrounded by mountains, and antimatter generators in the far distance.

After making sure his weapons were in satisfactory order, Scott slowly turned 360 degrees to take in the surroundings; "Where are we exactly anyway? Seems pretty... boring."

"As I told you, it's not a key location," replied Tullius, "we're nearby an abandoned fuel station and reactor, similar to many others on this planet. Plans to revive it fell through and so it's been mostly forgotten."

Tessia looked deep in thought; "I imagine the enemy are hitting the other side of the planet pretty hard. Taking out the central refuelling stations would be a likely move."

"Yes," concurred Tullius, "disturbingly, the reapers certainly have sound strategies to back up their destructive force."

A digital barking sound emitted from Rebecca's omni-tool and she quickly levelled her arm in front of herself to read the results from her surveillance drone.

The engineer gulped loudly; "Whoa… guys…"

.***

The four squad members were laid flat on their stomachs upon the edge of a cliff top, looking down on the large valley below.

In the distance, settled motionless and almost directly in front of the abandoned reactor, was a large geth ship. The craft's model appeared like a cross between a geth cruiser and a drop-ship, but it didn't match anything known in the Alliance databases, a fact that concerned the group a fair bit.

Their current focus now however, was on the wide-spread wreckage of what looked like parts of a human-made spaceship.

Tessia was the first to speak; "What do you think the other ship was?"

"Hard to say," replied Tullius, "best guess from the ground scotching and impact craters, it fought with the geth cruiser in orbit, became badly damaged and then crashed here."

Scott frowned, puzzled; "Then the geth decided to park on the crash-site and set-up camp? Taking their time with the tea-bagging aren't they?"

The turian's eyes flicked from the scattered debris and to the geth ship; "Perhaps this is an old crash-site that they purposely searched for. It does seem unusual, whatever the reason. I'll expand the mission parameters to investigate the crash, but the main objectives take priority."

Rebecca was engrossed in her omni-tool but stopped typing after Tullius finished his sentence; "Fido got good intel, I've updated our tools with a layout of the local area, and enemy detection should be more accurate now too."

Scott looked at the mini-map on the HUD within his helmet; "That's an excessive amount of red dots."

Tessia smirked; "Not concerned about how out-numbered we are, are you?"

"Pish-naaarh," he calmly retorted, "it just looks like some crazy pizza-related eye-test in the bottom-corner of my vision all the time."

"Just one reason why I don't use a helmet myself," remarked Tullius, "I can see and focus better without it, I just check my omni-tool when I need any intel."

Scott frowned; "Which is a shame, coz turian helmets look badass."

"Tess, why don't you wear a helmet?" asked Rebecca.

Scott interrupted; "Don't suggest that, we shouldn't be hiding such beauty."

Tullius turned slightly; "But it's OK to hide my face?"

The turian's voice was so deadpan that Scott was actually concerned that he had caused him offense.

The team leader simply continued to stare at him, secretly amused at how much he was making the human squirm.

Tessia quickly chimed in with a chuckle before Scott could say anything stupid, nudging his shoulder with her elbow; "To answer your question Becky, it's because I fully trust in my own biotic barrier like you do your shields. Also, like our fearless leader, I prefer to have completely unobstructed vision, even if it does make checking maps and team locations less convenient."

"Back on task," stated Tullius, peering back over the cliff and to his omni-tool, "I'd estimate around one hundred of them."

Rebecca added her own observations with a waver in her voice, "and that's just in this area, there's probably more in the ship, maybe even some in the reactor."

Tessia squinted; "I can't really see one hundred of them. Most seem to just be standing around down there, but some are likely hidden behind the debris."

"Let's get blasting," said Scott, eager to start shooting.

"Not so fast," commanded Tullius, "remember, the geth have a swarm intelligence, we can't rush in without a plan."

Scott blinked a few times beneath his helmet; "What?"

Tessia looked over to him again; "You know, net-worked, share the same mind. So the moment we attack, they'll all instantly know about it and be on us."

"Oh yeah, I knew that. So what's the plan?" asked Scott.

Tullius glanced at the data on his omni-tool again then back to the valley; "We move to infiltrate the geth ship. It's the likeliest place they'd be holding the artefact, we may also find evidence on-board that'll help us find out what happened to the Retrieval Squad."

"I've brought all my best geth-system hack routines," informed Rebecca, "if we can get past their firewalls we should be able to get answers."

"Then we sabotage the ship, right?" suggested Scott.

"If we get the chance," hoped Tessia.

"Without blowing ourselves up," added Rebecca.

"Correct," accepted Tullius, "if we get no results, we then move onto the abandoned reactor. Since it's without power, it's the least likely place the geth would occupy, but there must be a reason they're guarding it."

"Sweet," said Scott starting to get up, "now we get blasting?"

"Be patient while I explain our strategy," said Tullius, ignoring the human who slumped back down with a sigh, "the geth have strong shields so equip disruptor ammo to bring them down and then finish them off quick, with luck, the ammo should also stun them in the process. We need to hit as many of them simultaneously from the out-set as possible, starting with the closest first to give us breathing room, so I want you in position and to hold until I give the signal."

"Sounds good," smiled Tessia, a small wave of excitement washing over her as adrenaline began to pump through her body.

The team leader consulted his omni-tool again; "I'll mark the positions for you. After the opening shots, stay at least a few meters away from each other so you're not bunched up, but don't isolate yourself in case you need back-up."

Rebecca glanced down to her right as a small distance marker appeared within her helmet HUD; "That puts us right in front of this cliff. We'll be against the wall to avoid sneak back-attacks, but will have nowhere to run if they rush us."

"That's why I'll be staying up here to cover you," said Tullius readying his sniper rifle, "I won't allow them to overwhelm you…"

Scott let out a little side comment; "Aww, he cares about us."

"… I'll keep an eye on all three of you and direct when needed. Now, move out."

The asari and the two humans began their slow descent. To their relief, it was a relatively easy climb down the cliff with enough solid rocks jutting out to give decent footholds.

"Dammit," hissed Tessia as gravel noisily gave away under her foot and cascaded down the cliff.

Seeing that Tessia was otherwise fine, Rebecca paused; "We ok?"

The voice of the squad leader calmly spoke over the private comm system installed within each member's armour; "Concentrate on the climb, I'll inform you if there's movement. No change so far, all the geth units are stood still, none of them are looking in our direction."

A few more minutes of careful climbing later, the three reached the bottom of the cliff and promptly began to move to their designated points.

Scott used his tactical cloak to avoid any chance of detection, while the other two had to make do with crouched-running. Rebecca scurried up to the virtual objective cone pointing at the ground a few metres in front, and watched it vanish from her HUD as she took cover behind a large sheet of crumpled metal.

The wreckage of the unidentified ship made for great cover and Scott easily made it to his assigned point while tracking the red dots on his mini-map. He suddenly noticed one of the dots turn into a small red cross.

The voice of Tullius came through just as Tessia reached a collection of dented shipping containers; "I've marked the closest targets I want you to take out. I'm lining up my own shot too, execute on the count of three."

Tessia's left hand began to glow with blue energy.

"One…" counted Tullius.

Scott engaged the disruptor ammo on his M-8 Avenger assault rifle.

"Two…"

Rebecca took a deep breath.

"Wait!"

Scott half began to stand up but then dropped himself back to the ground; "Ack, you trolling? What's happened?"

"Tess, stay still and don't make a sound," ordered the turian as he watched a previously unseen geth trooper rise from the other side of the containers that Tessia was using for cover.

Scott watched on from his position on the left, now also able to see the trooper stand up; "It must have been sat still all this time, it's position has only just appeared on my map."

The asari adept glanced to the radar on her omni-tool, the same new blip appearing on her read-out, barely a metre in front of her.

"Maybe it heard her and it woke from a kinda rest mode," whispered Rebecca to the team as she watched from the far right.

The synthetic being made a series of beeping as it looked towards the cliff-face over the containers.

"Hold," whispered Tullius.

Tessia bit her bottom lip in frustration, not fearful in the slightest, but well aware that she'd have to retaliate if spotted, and the team would then lose the advantage of a surprise attack. Remembering that some geth could see heat sources through objects, she wondered if such a scenario would play out. The asari's heart-rate began to increase but she stayed silent and still.

The mechanic trooper slowly turned, sounding out a small burst of squelched glitch-like sounds before slowly walking away.

"You're in luck T'Loki," informed Tullius, "it's moving away, seems to be heading towards your original target, you'll have to deal with that one too. I'll start the count again, on three. Everyone ready…"

The team leader lined-up his shot again, the crosshairs skilfully locked on the head of a geth far off in the distance; "One… two... three!"

The following happened as simultaneously as the turian had hoped for.

Scott stood up and promptly aimed at his target, the disruptor ammo rapidly blaring from his assault rifle and making quick work of the trooper's shield. Upon it shattering, the following spray sent enough voltage through the geth's mechanical body to give it no chance to retaliate. It's broken frame fell to the floor, twitching with electricity.

"Electric Swiss cheese baby!" yelled Scott.

There was a cracking sound heard overhead and a distant geth dropped to the floor, the handy work of Tullius.

Rebecca rose with a fully charged arc pistol, humming with intent, in her right hand. She had confidence in the weapon, knowing it was built by quarians for use against the geth, but whimpered when her shot hit around her target's upper left leg.

She silently cursed at how much she relied on the laser-sight that had been attached to her old pistol, but to her relief, the fully charged blast had taken out the geth's shield in one large spark, causing her more recent training to kick in.

The engineer's other hand clenched at the pistol to steady it and she moved her wrist slightly with a quick tap of the trigger. A weak blast hit the trooper's chest to no effect.

'Higher, more to the right.'

Raising her hands slightly allowed her next quick shot to hit it just below it's long neck. This shot seemed to stun it but still did little damage.

'Bit higher.'

Her arms raised a fraction more and she held down the trigger causing the pistol to charge with a hum.

The geth aimed it's rifle towards her, and the seconds it took for her own weapon to charge up additional power seemed to drag like minutes. The moment the hum built to its familiar apex, Rebecca released her trigger finger.

There was a shower of sparks as the geth's head popped off.

"Nyyyaaahh," whined Rebecca, half in frustration, half in victory.

Another sniping shot flew overhead as Tullius scored another distant kill.

Tessia rose up, her entire body shaking with excitement, and her left arm already held out to fire a blast of biotic energy at her original target; "Warp!"

As the geth's shield and armour shimmered with blue flames, the trooper who had been walking towards the now fiery scene quickly turned 180 with the shared knowledge that an asari was attacking them from behind the containers.

Just as it raised it's rifle, Tessia let off two precise shots with her M-6 Carnifex. The shaved-off metal from the heavy pistol shredded off the geth's right hand, causing it to drop it's weapon.

The first geth, although still coated in a blue hue, took aim and fired it's rifle.

Expecting this, Tessia had already begun to slide her left foot around, her right foot then pushing her body a step to the left of her position to dodge the attack. The asari's body gracefully twirled around as she thrust her left arm from her hip and out; "Throw!"

The biotic attack sailed through the air at blinding speed, connecting and reacting with the blue flames on the first geth. There was a loud but satisfying detonation that obliterated the target and launched the second geth into a crumpled heap a few metres away.

Tessia's face seemed to darken as she stood there, the winds causing a light breeze to blow across the battlefield while she glared at the remains of her defeated foes. She then turned to wave back at Tullius on the clifftop with a child-like giggle, her face now bright and cheerful.

Rebecca's eyes widened at the display; "Damn she's good…"

The asari's lips formed a smirk as she turned to Scott; "That's two for me Scotty, try not to fall behind now."

"Ohhhh," replied Scott rotating his shoulders, "you wanna keep score again, you're on blue."

Rebecca shook her head in disbelief; "Shouldn't you be more concerned about living through this rather than counting kills? There's like, a hundred of them remember?"

Scott pointed over towards his fellow human; "Becky's in too."

"Whaaaattt?" whined Becky before doing a quick calculation in her head, a second later she added; "OK fine."

The voice of Tullius joined in over the communication system; "Area is clear, but now they're alert to us, expect their full force to come at us."

"Bring it! Let's kick some ass!" cheered Scott, "Hooha!"

Various types of geth began to reveal themselves from behind the countless parts of wreckage further up the field.

Tullius also noticed more pouring out of the geth ship; "Stay in position, let them come to you so there's less chance of being flanked. This'll mean I'll be able to protect you from range too."

Scott's voice came in through the team chat; "Aww man, we have to camp?"

The turian's voice became slightly sterner; "Do NOT just dash out without support."

"That last comment was mostly aimed at me wasn't it?" asked Scott not really expecting an answer.

Rebecca chimed in; "I like having a team leader who knows what he's doing."

"I bet you do," replied Scott in a mischievous tone.

"Shut up," grumbled Rebecca.

The turian sighed over the channel, not entirely sure what they were referencing, but refusing to even remotely let any of his squad start arguing amongst themselves; "Stay focused team, leave the non-essential chatter until after we're in the clear."

"Impossible sir," laughed Scott.

Tessia's voice calmly announced; "The geth are approaching fast."

The nearest one was downed before it even got in range of the three ground troops, but even with a skilled sniper on their side, they knew that it was just a matter of time before they would have to fight too.

Rebecca gulped at the sight of the large mass of advancing units; "I've never seen so many geth in one place before."

Her attention was then drawn to something fired from the group on a collision course with one of her teammates; "Tess! Rocket trooper! Tess!"

Tessia's heart skipped a beat as she saw the missile speeding towards her, adrenaline and biotic energy automatically rushing through her being.

From the viewpoint of her teammates, it looked like the rocket was going to slam right into her, but the asari glided a few steps to the right in a blue blur as if she slid across a sheet of ice. The projectile then continued its course, crashing into the cliff-face with a loud explosion.

Tullius felt the mild tremor through the ground beneath but wasn't concerned as he knew the vast cliff was unlikely to crumble.

Still, he paused a moment to sense any further structural movement before returning his right eye to his scope; "They're closing in, approaching front and both sides."

"Going for the counter," stated Scott cloaking himself and shifting to the next piece of cover as he watched the rocket trooper get closer to his position.

Scott then stood and took aim before suddenly dropping back down to the ground as a missile flew overhead.

The infiltrator turned his cloak off as he hid and yelled at the geth; "I'm a mile away and cloaked! How the hell did you see me you cheap bast-"

The explosion behind him masked the rest of his ranting while Tullius took aim to cover Scott.

Rebecca's voice came crying out over the comms; "Ahhh! It's trying to poop bombs on me!"

The team looked over to see the engineer being chased out of cover by a small hovering drone dropping fist-sized bombs in a row after her.

The bomber was then struck by a pistol shot from Tessia, causing it to 'rattle' in mid-air before being finished off with another pull of the trigger.

Rebecca sighed in relief but a second later raised her arm to activate her combat drone; "Behind you!"

Fido materialized next to the asari as she turned around, realising that a cloaked geth hunter had crept up on her during the distraction. The combat drone sent a high-voltage shock at the geth unit just as it de-cloaked to fire at Tessia point-blank.

Tessia slammed the palm of her left hand against the mid-section of the attacker, a wave of transparent blue seemingly blasting out through it's back before it's entire body was thrown several metres back. While in mid-air, Tessia expertly fired a pistol shot at it's head before it hit the ground.

"Whoooaaa, did you guys… whhooaaa," said Rebecca, impressed.

"She knows the space kung-fu!" laughed Scott.

Tullius quickly jumped in on the communications; "Nicely dealt with, but save the victory dances until we're clear. More incoming, stay in the current formation, you're all doing well but don't get cocky."

The following ten minutes ended with the three ground troops surrounded. Even with the long-range sniping support, they were soon overwhelmed as the geth tactically carried out suppressive fire while using their number to flank around the sides.

Rebecca caught her breath while her shield recharged; "We're pinned down, the moment we even try to retaliate we get blasted."

A geth hunter revealed itself beside Rebecca, aiming it's plasma shotgun at her head.

The female human yelped and, without even thinking, had already turned and pressed a quick-key on her omni-tool. A shower of sparks from the overload caused the hunter's shield to power down and granted the added benefit of stunning it for a couple of seconds. Rebecca took that time to start scrambling on her hands and knees to the next available cover.

"Becky!" cried out Scott, too far away to aid her.

Tessia was closer, being placed between the two humans, but she was engaged with three troopers that had advanced on her.

Rebecca could hear the hunter's weapon fully charge up and rolled onto her back.

Knowing her omni-tool needed a while to cool-down, she reached for her sidearm; 'Please.'

She held her pistol up, already aware that she wouldn't be able to cause enough damage to save herself, but there was no way she'd not at least try in her final moments; 'Please.'

Her index finger was only half down on the trigger when a much more powerful shot was fired.

Rebecca closed her eyes and then screamed out, her knees coming up to cover her chest in reflex before she realised that she was unharmed.

One of her eyes opened to see that the hunter was missing it's lamp-like head.

"Epp!" cried Rebecca realising the geth's shotgun was still fully charged and pointing at her.

There was a familiar sound and a spark bounced off the headless geth's left shoulder, causing it to half spin and fire the charged shot off harmlessly into the distance before it crumpled to the ground with no signs of life.

"Thank you," said Rebecca, scrambling up onto her knees and keeping her back against the nearest chunk of wrecked spaceship.

"No problem," replied Tullius over the comms as he reloaded his sniper rifle, "you're doing good, keep calm and just stay alive."

"Yes sir."

"Ya good there?" asked Scott, his voice sounding better than ever in Rebecca's ears.

A wave of emotion hit Rebecca as her confidence slowly returned. Wanting to sound light-hearted, but unable to help complaining over her near-death experience, she replied with; "Why does everything have to be on insanity mode?"

"I've had harder challenges in the Annex Arena than this," chuckled Scott while unloading his clip at the nearest geth trooper before dodging the return fire, "whoa! I'm sorry, mercy! Mercy!"

Rebecca watched as Scott hid behind cover, seven troopers advancing on his position; "Thought you said this'd be a walk in the park."

Scott dived to a better position, trying his best to return fire; "This is not the park!"

"Scott," called Tullius, "there's too many on your side now. Make your way to Tess, then both of you move to Rebecca's location before spreading out again but facing west this time. I'll cover you."

Tessia took out two more geth troopers but became concerned that she had 'lost' the third one that she had been fighting during the action.

Realising she was sharing the same piece of cover with the enemy, Tessia leaned over and grabbed the geth trooper with surprising strength, dragging it over the top of a broken scanner desk and then throwing it to the ground by her feet. Before the trooper could react, Tessia's entire body began to glow a fierce blue as she punched through the robot's head with amazing force.

She stood back up and cracked her knuckles while glaring at the remaining, but still plentiful, collection of geth units; "Let's do this!"

"Oh yeeeaaahhh!" yelled Scott, blasting away as he ran.

.***


	4. Chapter 3 – Hop to it

**Chapter 3 – Hop to it**

Just over half an hour later, Tessia and a helmetless Scott were stood on top of a pile of broken geth, heavily breathing from exhaustion, their weapons still drawn but shaky in their hands.

The two almost looked monstrous, armour splattered with mud and synthetic blood, dangerous intent brandished through gritted teeth and cold glares.

Scott was the first out of the two to realise no more of the enemy were coming. His expression softened and he raised his shotgun into the air; "I'm king of geth mountain!"

Tessia's even darker expression completely switched to one of child-like glee; "That makes me queen then!"

"I'm just knackered," added Rebecca who was sat off to the side cuddling her helmet, "I dunno how you guys do it. Sometimes I think I should have just stayed in the workshops."

"Tally up!" announced Scott, returning his shotgun to it's magnetic-like hold on his back along with his assault rife, "Though, doubt any of you scored as high as me. Killed me plenty, scored a round twenty! Boom!"

"Ouuuuuhh," winced Tessia, "just missed out by two."

Scott wiped the tip of his nose with his thumb, unable to hide a widening grin as he proudly rested a hand on her shoulder; "Don't worry about it, that's just what happens when you challenge the Lawton."

Tessia canted her head and blinked cutely; "I meant for you sweetie, I got twenty-two."

Both of Scott's arms flopped down and his mouth hung open; "What?! Are you serious?! Nooooo! I was so close!"

"What about you Becky?" asked the asari trying not to giggle too loudly.

"Fifteen," replied the engineer meekly.

Scott sighed in relief; "At least I didn't lose to Bex."

Rebecca then looked to her omni-tool for a moment; "But Fido got eight, so that actually adds up to twenty-three for me."

Despite being out-scored by a single kill herself, Tessia burst out laughing at the defeated expression on Scott's face.

Scott shook his head and then waved his hands around; "What? Your drone doesn't count."

Rebecca shrugged; "That's like saying guns don't count and we should be out there killing bad guys with our bare hands."

Scott pointed at his fellow human; "Now that's an idea! Next wave, melee attacks only!"

"No!" objected Rebecca who noticed that Tessia was seriously considering the proposal.

Tullius finally re-joined the group after his walk from the cliff. The four stood in silence for a moment.

Scott and Tessia braced themselves, ready for a scolding regarding their carefree and dangerous attitudes on the field.

The silence was finally broken as Tullius looked towards Tessia; "Thirty-one."

The asari blinked; "Wha…"

"Your challenge… thirty-one, how did I do?"

Scott quickly looked between Tessia and Tullius before jumping down from the pile of geth body parts. Lowering on one knee, he bowed his head to the turian; "We are not worthy to be in your presence, you are the true king of geth mountain."

Tessia followed suit, hopping down and performing a curtsy, keeping her head down; "My lord."

Half playing along, Tullius beckoned them to stand up; "Rise my subjects, you may still best me by the day's end."

Rebecca calculated the total quickly in her mind as she pushed herself up from the ground; "Ninety-six geth altogether, that's gotta be a record for us."

"Something tells me that's not all of them," assumed Tullius, "they wouldn't leave their ship unguarded."

Scott looked around the battlefield; "Still no sign of the other squad. What are the lamp-heads up to?"

"Let's move on towards the ship," suggested Tullius, "hopefully some answers will be within. Stay on guard."

Both humans put their helmets back on as the team began to walk to the geth ship.

Scott turned his head as he heard Rebecca sigh; "Sup Becky-Bex?"

The engineer could feel herself blushing underneath her helmet; "It's nothing, just thinking about something."

"Awh, go on."

"Well," started Rebecca, trying her best not to sound overly enthusiastic, "the geth are so… interesting. I wish we could find one that didn't want to kill us, we could learn so much from them."

To Rebecca's surprise, Scott didn't tease her, instead he replied with; "I heard Shepard got one of the geth to work on our side."

"What?" asked Tessia with confusion in her voice, "I thought they all shared the same mind, how did one turn good?"

Rebecca answered this, unable to hide her excitement on the topic; "Their AI is extremely sophisticated and has evolved, you could argue that they're capable of being unique living individuals. The simplest way to explain is that the geth split into two factions after meeting the reapers. One side continued to stay on the outskirts of the galaxy, only attacking other races when under threat. The other side…"

Scott chimed in; "Welcomed their mechanical overlords with open arms and became their bitches."

"The 'heretics', as they became known to the other geth," Rebecca nodded.

Tullius continued surveying the area as they walked, eager to check behind the scattered debris as they moved on, anticipating an ambush every twenty seconds.

"Oh, so one geth from the goody side was chosen to split off and join Shepard's fight," Tessia smiled with understanding before flashing Rebecca a grin; "Get them to work for us."

Rebecca turned to the asari while walking around a broken generator; "Yeah, right."

"It'll be easy for you Bex," added Scott, "just PM them on the net."

"I'm sure that was the first thing the quarians tried," replied Rebecca sarcastically.

"Seriously," joked Scott pretending to type on a keyboard, mimicking the drafting of an e-mail; "Dear Platform-14867, please tell your homeboys we should band-up and save the universe. Let's stop mucking about and kill some reapers together. Yours sincerely GethLover57. PS: Soz about all the times I hacked your mates and made them shoot each other…"

Rebecca realised he was referencing her first encounter with the geth, a time when her only tactic was to hide and repeatedly use a sabotage omni-program until the room was clear; "Hey, I only-"

Scott finished his mock e-mail with; "And giggled about it every time in a cute but clearly insane manner."

The engineer's helmeted head flicked between the other two members of the team in embarrassment and then straight back to Scott before coughing and then hissing a quick; "Shut up."

Tullius chipped in now; "Remember that talk we had about being a slight more covert? Anything could be lying in wait behind the debris around here."

"You mean like this one?" asked Scott suddenly dashing up to the nearest trashed bank of machinery to his left.

"Don't-" started Tullius.

The moment the human lowered his hands on the surface of the burned-out console, there was a clanking sound as if something metallic scraped down the side.

The other three quickly raised their guns as Scott froze, not even daring to utter the 'oops' running through his head right now.

A silence followed that all three expected to be broken by the appearance of a geth unit from behind the console.

After a full ten seconds went by, Scott raised an index finger and quietly readied his shotgun before slowly creeping along and around the left side to flank the possible threat.

His teammates continued to cover the right side, slowly starting to fan out in case of a fire-fight.

The infiltrator slowly walked around the corner to the blindside and gasped at what he saw.

Rebecca's trigger finger twitched but she held back due to a lack of target; "What is it?"

Tullius relaxed upon noticing the human returning the shotgun to his back, however, the turian's irritation was quite apparent; "I'll shoot you myself Lawton."

Rebecca began to wonder how the turian hadn't already shot the ridiculous man during the last few missions. She re-visited her belief that Tullius had the patience of a saint.

Tessia shook her head; "Scott, you often remind me of Leeroy, a human vanguard I used to know that constantly flung himself into danger… He died by the way."

"No wait, I know this," said Scott now crouching behind the machinery and bringing up his omni-tool, "there's a container-unit attached. Treasure-sense, tingling."

"What is he doing?" asked Tessia.

Rebecca canted her head, beginning to recognize the part of the ship that the debris originated from; "I do believe he is completing a side-quest."

Tessia looked to Tullius; "The humans are speaking in strange code again."

"Just watch," smiled Rebecca under her helmet, "I've never met a man who's got better senses when it comes to finding credits or useful items hidden inside junk."

Scott suddenly reappeared from behind the console holding up a brightly coloured orange box above his head; "Trweasure!"

"The black box!" exclaimed Tessia.

Scott lowered the item to inspect it suspiciously; "Looks kinda orange to me."

"That's normal," said Rebecca walking forward and holding out her hands, "although the model looks rather unique. May I?"

Scott handed the box over to her; "As if I'd ever deny you a new gizmo to play with."

Placing the black box on the surface of the console, Rebecca excitedly booted-up her omni-interface programs; "Should be simple enough to access, just gimme a second."

Tullius studied Scott's stance, wishing that he could see his facial features for a better read; "Good work on finding the box, but we're really going to have to have a chat later about your suicidal tendencies."

"Sorry boss," sincerely apologised the human.

"Problem," mumbled Rebecca, pausing her program, "it's got various protection layers blocking non-crew members from accessing it. Also… take a look."

The other three members grouped around the display of the engineer's omni-tool and instantly recognized the flickering logo.

"Cerberus," said Tullius in disgust.

Scott looked around at the scattered debris; "So this was a Cerb ship? Haha! Serves them right."

Tessia frowned and then stuck out her tongue as if there was a bad taste in her mouth; "What were those jerks up to and what's the connection with the geth-bots?"

"We won't know for sure until Watkins breaks the security," said Tullius with full confidence in the engineer's skill, "how long?"

"It will take a while, they've really upped the security," said Rebecca, "but I could try cracking it on the fly rather than hold up the mission."

"Good," said Tullius, his tech armour flaring into life around his body, ready for any upcoming close-combat, "see to it, but don't get too distracted, we're heading into the geth ship."

.***

The daunting ship being a hybrid of at least two known models didn't matter to the team as none among their number had knowledge of geth ship layouts or what to expect to begin with.

The narrow metallic corridors led to similar plain and windowless compartment-rooms containing banks of geth technology.

Tullius led the group, using his omni-tool to unlock doors that took them deeper inside the ship.

"This seems too easy," grumbled Scott with his shotgun ready, "only two bog-standard guards at the ramp and nothing since?"

"We've spoken about this," said Rebecca just behind the two, cradling the black box in her right arm while running an omni-program on her left, "stop taunting the universe into killing us."

Tessia, self-proclaimed defender of the occupied Rebecca, was taking up the rear; "Maybe they all flooded out when we thrashed the ninety-odd from earlier and there's none left."

"A hopeful notion," started Tullius opening the next door to reveal a line of five geth, "but…"

Scott began to ready a cryo-blast when the turian leader raised an arm and quietly but firmly voiced a; "Wait. Quiet."

The squad remained in defensive stances for a moment as they watched the five geth ignore their existence. The synthetics had their backs to the doorway and were connected to various equipment several metres away. They were unmoving, seemingly occupied with whatever task they were performing.

Glancing over to the left, Tullius noted an unguarded doorway to another corridor.

"I think…" whispered Rebecca, pausing to see if her words had any negative effect, "as long as we don't engage or mess with anything, we can just sneak through."

Rebecca, Tulluis, and Tessia all turned to Scott.

After a few seconds, he realised why they were doing so, and grumbled with a hint of disappointment; "Okay… I won't touch anything."

Staying in their ordered formation, the team crept forward, quietly turning left and ignoring the distracted geth.

Although leading ahead, Tullius kept glancing back, only relaxing when Tessia gave him a quick smile and nod to show they were in the clear.

Upon reaching the middle of the next room, Tullius turned to the group, his voice still hushed; "Good so far, it looks like we have three options here."

Scott looked around, taking note of the coloured-coded holographic locks on the three doors adorning each of the surrounding walls; "Two of them green with minor security, like all the rest we've been through… and then there's that orange one over there."

Tessia smirked; "It is rather inviting isn't it?"

"It's decided then," announced Tullius, guessing it would be the most likely place to find at least one of the objectives, "Watkins is still working on the black box, you're up Lawton."

"Oh yeah, let the hack-master do his thing," said Scott flexing his fingers as he walked towards the door, his omni-tool flaring into life so he could run the interface program.

Rebecca rested her back against the wall just next to him, fully engrossed with her own task but still able to quietly ask her teammate a couple of questions; "Hey mister hack-master, you're using that geth bypass algorithm I set-up right?"

"Of course."

"And you've selected the correct ID mask so that you don't set off any alerts, right?"

There were a few seconds of hesitation from Scott before he quickly tapped a couple of commands into his tool; "Err, yeah, don't want a visit from the neighbours do we?"

"Noooope," agreed Rebecca.

Tessia had unlocked and glanced down one of the other doors while waiting, but only found more passages leading deeper into the ship. She returned just a few moments before Scott tricked the highly secure door into granting access.

"Booyah," said Scott in a soft tone, still paranoid about being heard.

After the squad crossed the threshold, the door quickly closed behind them with a loud shunt.

As a red coloured lock hologram appeared on its front, Scott looked to Tullius and calmly asked; "Trap?"

"Trap," agreed Tullius with a nod, "guns ready."

The large room was subtly different to the previous parts of the ship that they had travelled through. Tessia began to inspect one of the various metal columns that rose from the floor, noticing that some connected to the ceiling while others cut short by a few metres.

"Our radars are being jammed," stated Rebecca attaching the black box to her ammo belt so that she could free her hands up.

"BAH!" cried out Scott, his armour shield shimmering and sparking for a few seconds, "what was that? Like an overload but…"

Rebecca began to step towards him when she noticed her own shield read-out in her HUD acting oddly; "My shield's draining, dampening field or something. You probably got hit by-"

Noticing a red laser sight, Tullius grabbed Scott by the shoulder and roughly pulled him out of the way just as a red beam sizzled across the projected path.

"Get to cover!" ordered Tullius as he and Scott hid behind the nearest pillar.

Rebecca froze and could only let out a small scream as she noticed a red dot on her chest. Time seemed to stop for her but she still couldn't react, all she could think about was her imminent death.

There was a flash of red and a voice, surely signalling her end. Rebecca closed her eyes just as her world crashed violently. She expected to be still standing but with a large hole through her torso, instead she found herself on the floor with a small headache.

Her eyes flickered open to see Tessia was on all fours over her, the asari's concerned expression directly above Rebecca's helmet-covered face.

"Tess," gasped Rebecca, her head rolling to one side to see a melted hole on the wall nearby, then back up to her, "th-thank you."

"No problem sweetie," smiled Tessia.

Scott gave Tullius a grin and a thumbs up regarding the view; "Hot action."

The turian simply shook his head and then checked the corners of the room as Tessia stood and helped the engineer up, the two resting their backs against a different pillar.

Rebecca's near-death experience filled her with adrenaline and she promised herself not to freeze up again; "Right, I'm ready."

"Where's that coming from?" asked Scott with panic in his voice.

The three followed the direction of his pointed hand to see a red dot on the ground and moving slightly off towards the wall before returning to the floor again.

"The ceiling!" concluded Tullius quickly.

The four held their guns tightly, turning to take a step away from the pillars and get a better view of the origin. The red sniper-like beam led back to the 'eye' of a strange-looking geth climbing across the ceiling as if it had suckers or hooks on it's hands and feet.

Rebecca whimpered at the sight; "Not ready, not ready!"

This unusual geth's body was made of a white and black springy synthetic substance that resembled organic muscle tissue, giving an almost 'skinned alive' look.

"There's another one," pointed out Tessia as it climbed the left-most pillar and revealed itself.

"Not seen these guys before," said Scott, switching out his shotgun for his M-8 Avenger assault rifle.

With quick aim, Scott fired a barrage at the one now crouched on top of the left pillar, but the target jumped with unexpected speed over to the left.

"Spry little buggers aren't they?" noted Scott, his eyes catching up to see that the strange geth had jumped to the next nearby pillar.

"The Alliance call them hoppers," informed Rebecca who had clearly done her research.

"Fitting," mused Tessia as she fired a shot from her heavy pistol. This time the intended target and the other nearby hopper leapt in different directions, both then pausing for a couple of seconds, their red 'eyes' glowing brighter.

"Scatter!" yelled Tullius as two red beams shot out towards Tessia and himself.

Rebecca let loose a charged shot from her arc pistol, causing one hopper to lose it's line of fire after relocating itself; "Damn they're fast. How are we supposed to hit them?"

"Shoot them more!" cried out Scott, squeezing and holding the trigger of his rifle.

The hail of chipped metal instantly made one of the hoppers jump across from a wall to the top of a nearby pillar. Scott didn't let up, his constant fire following and causing the geth to transfer to the side of the next pillar.

Rebecca studied the hopper's movement as Scott quickly reloaded and started to fire again, his aim purposely herding the geth towards the other side of the room.

The hopper then dropped down low against the far wall, giving Scott an easy straight-forward target; "Got you!"

In his eagerness to get 'first hit' on this newly encountered enemy, Scott hadn't been paying attention to the positions of his equally distracted teammates.

Scott let go of the trigger, but not before a few bursts had sparked across the shield of his squad leader.

Tullius turned around, obviously irritated at the friendly fire and barked out the first insult that came to mind; "Amateur!"

"Sorry, my bad," said Scott, holding his hands up before quickly diving to the floor and rolling to avoid a quick blast from the hopper he had been chasing.

Rebecca, who had been closely watching everything, yelled over to Scott; "Small window! They only stay still when charging up an attack!"

Scott glanced to the floor for a moment as he took this information in. He then snapped his fingers as an idea formed; "Lightbulb!"

Taking a couple of shots for cover, Scott dashed over to Rebecca, narrowly avoiding another blast of red death. Upon joining her, the two quickly slid around the corner of a pillar to avoid line of sight, causing the hoppers to reposition again.

"They're tracking you," said Rebecca, "think you pissed them off."

Scott quickly placed his free hand on both of her shoulders, something he often did when wanting something; "Bex, keep on one of them, but only use charged shots, no quickies. Be ready for our classic omni-combi, you'll know when."

"Ryoukai," replied Rebecca, instantly assuming that he wanted timed jumps from the target, rather than her using rapid fire and increasing its movements.

"Also… you better get moving, sorry," warned Scott solemnly.

"What do yo-" started Rebecca before his tactical cloak activated and made him seem almost invisible.

She could just make out which direction he was running off to before she lost sight of him. Her eyes then locked on to the two red beams of light lining up towards her.

Rebecca broke into a run under a hail of lasers; "Oh yeah, just redirect all the aggro at me why don't you! Damn infiltrator!"

As she ran past Tullius, he fired a shot off towards a hopper; "We'll keep the other one busy."

Tessia also joined in after hearing the hints of the potential plan over the comms, firing her pistol and splitting the two hoppers up in different directions.

Rebecca slipped around one of the pillars and grumbled at her jammed radar, realising how much she habitually relied on its aid. Cautiously, the engineer peered out and spotted her pursuer.

Fully hiding again, Rebecca held her arc pistol with both hands, charging its power up by keeping pressure on the trigger.

The hopper turned it's head just in time to see the female human re-appear from cover and let go of the trigger, launching a bolt of electricity in it's direction.

The panicked attack was off by half a metre, but it still had the desired effect. Rebecca kept the pattern going, the charge-up and following blast of her arc pistol being quick enough to not allow the hopper a chance to retaliate.

Just as Rebecca fired her fourth shot, causing the hopper to leap to the left again, she noticed a white omni-tech cartridge flying through the air, heading for the pillar where the hopper was just about to land.

"Cry-ooooooooooo!" called out Scott, appearing at the origin of the shining trail, confident that his predicted attack would land.

The cryo-blast collided with the geth unit in a burst of frost that started to seize it's arms and legs up.

Rebecca held out her left arm in the direction of the hopper and clenched her fist before flicking out her pinky finger and thumb. The only recently programmed hand-gesture-shortcut successfully ran the incinerate routine, much to Rebecca's delight.

The flaming orange disc-like cartridge soared through the air and impacted against the chilled hopper with a much bigger explosion than normally expected.

Scott put on a deep voice and purposely stuttered to mimic a video game announcement; "C-c-c-combo!"

The hopper fell from the pillar, parts of it shattering upon reaching the floor, the rest just burning away as it's final twitches slowed and then stopped.

The two humans nodded to each other for a job well done and then turned to deal with the other hopper. Before the two could even get a visual, they noticed their HUD radars flickering back into life.

Tessia was stood over the motionless body of the other hopper, putting a round in it's chest just to be sure.

Scott held both his hands out, his palms up in slight disbelief; "How did you guys get that one?"

The asari took a few different poses with her pistol as if she was modelling for a gun magazine; "I distracted it…"

Tullius shrugged and then holstered his sniper rifle; "And I took it out from a distance after using a quick overload."

The humans looked down to see a single bullet hole clearly in the centre of it's 'eye'.

Scott looked to Tullius, then the perfect headshot, then back again; "You scare me sometimes."

"Be thankful we're on the same side and I'm not shooting 'you' in the back," said Tullius in his normal deadpan way.

"Um, yeah, again, sorry bout that boss," apologized Scott for his earlier mistake, "but those things were well nimble, it's a shame we couldn't…"

Scott paused for a moment as he realised something and then looked to Tessia; "Hey blue, why didn't you use that stasis power thingy you have? We could have kept them still. Too easy?"

Had Tessia actually possessed eyebrows, they would have been raising; "The earlier battle wore me out a bit. Despite popular belief, asari can't just constantly fling biotics about all day, especially on a big mission like this. It's a huge drain on my energy. Can't be fainting on you guys now can I?"

"Oh yeah, makes sense," replied Scott recalling that many human biotics would have already been exhausted or practically dead by now.

"Reminds me," said Tessia as she walked to a door on the other side of the room, "we all have to go to Ryuusei's sushi place after this. The bill will be immense, I hope you have some credits on you."

"Me?" asked Scott.

"Did I not mention the forfeit for coming last in the tallyathon earlier?"

Tullius eyed the door, noticing that it was protected by another high security lock; "Well, let's see what they were guarding…"

.***


	5. Chapter 4 – Teaming up

**Chapter 4 – Teaming Up**

"Why do geth have holding cells?" asked Tessia as she looked into the empty cubicles around the room.

Rebecca was tapping away on her omni-tool and at the console in front of her; "I can only get limited information. This seems to be some sort of prison-ship that has held a variety of races. Asari, batarian, human, turian, krogan and a few others have all been detained here at some point. Hundreds of them."

"That's concerning," mumbled Scott, "didn't think the lamp-heads took prisoners. They holding court sessions and executions now? Maybe trading hostages for oil and wax supplies?"

"Any cells occupied?" asked Tullius.

Rebecca scanned through the stream of data and found a small live map; "Four cells next door have their barriers powered up. Could be our guys."

"Let's go," ordered Tullius, "stay vigilant."

A minute later, the squad came across the first of the four small active cells, a light blue transparent type of shielding covering the entrance.

Tessia was the first to approach the barrier and could clearly see a male salarian, wearing white and cyan STG armour, pacing back and forth. Upon catching a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision, he stopped moving and stood silently, studying her presence.

The salarian blinked his large eyes upwards a few times and then canted his head for a moment as if in disbelief; "A side-effect from the frequent knock-out gas the cells disperse? Thought it strange we hadn't received our next dose, or maybe we did, perhaps I'm still unconscious."

"Hello?" ventured Tessia.

"It speaks," exclaimed the prisoner in surprise, "how curious."

"Huh?"

The rest of the salarian's following out-spoken train of thought was rapidly worded again, a common trait of his species; "But why an asari? I thought if I was going insane I would imagine another salarian, perhaps a tap-dancing hanar. Unsure the shoes would make sense, the cane and top hat would be a nice touch."

Scott stepped into view next to Tessia; "We're the real deal."

"A human now?" frowned the prisoner, "Can't see the face, perhaps my mind can't decide on a convincing construct. Disappointing, thought my subconscious would be more creative."

Tullius stepped up next to try and speed things along; "We're N7 operations, sent by the Systems Alliance to extract you."

Upon seeing the team leader, the salarian took a step forward to get a closer look; "Tullius Nazario. I know of you, extremely skilled and highly extolled, heard you had enlisted with the humans since the invasion. Perhaps you aren't a figment of my imagination."

The turian nodded; "Are you part of the Retrieval Squad?"

"Yes, my alias is Leon, won't bother you with my full title, the other members of the team should also be held nearby."

Rebecca appeared from behind Tullius, pointing her thumb over her shoulder; "How do we get you out of here? Is it the panel over here?"

Leon brightened with a smile; "Correct, good eye. Ahh yes, freeing me will be definitive proof you're not fictional. I know the unlock code, good memory, watched geth input when locking us in, still curious as to why security was touch button rather than geth-only interface, but doesn't matter. Three-one-two-five-six-zero-nine."

Rebecca quietly repeated the number to herself and then quickly tapped it on the touch-screen panel opposite the cell. The energy barrier then powered down and vanished, allowing Leon to step over the threshold.

He smiled again, placing a hand on his chest and then taking a quick bow; "Thank you for rescuing me, quickly now, we must release the others."

As Rebecca entered the same code opposite the next cell, Leon slowly but firmly prodded a finger against Tullius's shoulder. The turian allowed himself to be swayed slightly but shot him a quizzical look.

"Final check," explained the salarian.

A deafening roar was heard causing everyone to turn towards the source of the sound; "GETH SCUM! I'LL RIP YOU APART!"

Rebecca had her back to the wall, her hands held up in defence; "I'm not geth, I'm human! I'm just in armour!"

"This better not be a trick!" warned a large krogan, now out of his cell and taking a firm step towards the yellow and black armoured engineer.

Leon, gently lowered Tullius and Scott's aimed weapons while speaking to the krogan; "Grogg, they're on our side, they've come to free us. Please try to stay calm."

"Huh?" grunted Grogg, "well then… ha! Thanks for the break-out."

With that, the krogan slapped Rebecca on the shoulder in thanks, nearly knocking her off her feet.

"No-no problem," replied the shaken human.

"Apologies once again," said Leon, "it's understandable, Grogg isn't the most patience of our team and we've been held here for almost two cycles now. Nearly seventy hours, that's a long time to be sat doing nothing."

"Well," said Scott, "I can understand that better than anyone, I was once trapped in a room that was locked with that bloody Towers of Hanoi program. I was mighty frustrated after just three hours of that."

"Three hours?" whispered Rebecca in disbelief, knowing she could have solved it in less than two minutes.

Scott continued; "What I don't get though, is why the big scary krogan is wearing the brightest neon pink battle armour that the galaxy has ever seen."

Grogg grinned with delight and replied in his naturally deep gravelly voice; "It is the colour of my ancestors, a mighty, proud and powerful warrior clan. This colour alone is enough to make the eyes of our enemies bleed over the battlefield, all who see it know to run or be slaughtered, hahaha."

"I completely get the eye-bleeding thing," nodded Scott squinting.

"Not covert in the slightest," added Leon, "but has been great for distraction and scare tactics. I'll open the remaining cells."

"I think that'd be best," agreed Rebecca nervously edging away from Grogg.

Moments later, a female quarian stepped out, clad in her race's typical enviro-suit, her individualism only displayed via the colourisation of her cloak.

Scott looked between Rebecca's armour and the quarian's yellow stripe-lined black cloak before whispering to Tullius; "I know she's got more black, and Becky's got more yellow, but is it a 'thing' these days for engineers to dress like hazard signs?"

The turian shrugged; "Probably just a coincidence."

The quarian also seemed to notice the similarities, her masked face turning away from Rebecca as if completely disinterested in her.

"Eh?" squeaked Rebecca, trying to figure out why she was feeling like she had just been snubbed.

Scott missed this exchange as he looked to his team leader; "Did you chose the rusty orange plating to compliment your tech armour and facial markings?"

"No," replied Tullius without a second thought.

The quarian spoke, her mask giving her voice the filtered effect well known to many who had met the species before; "My thanks Leon, it was horrible being cooped up in there."

Leon was already working on the panel for the fourth cell, idly replying; "My pleasure, if it wasn't for Nazario's team we may have been trapped forever, likely experimented on, lucky they came by."

"I suppose I should thank you," stated the quarian without actually offering any appreciations.

"Well we did fight through, like, a hundred geth," mentioned Scott.

"Only a hundred?" queried the quarian in an unimpressed tone, idly caressing her hood between two long covered fingers.

Tessia rested her right elbow on Scott's shoulder, also fishing for some gratitude; "Well, it was a shame we ran out of geth, but alas, we killed them all to save you and your team."

An unfamiliar male human's voice spoke out; "On behalf of the entire Retrieval Squad, we thank you, we were most certainly done for, if not for your rescue."

The voice belonged to the final freed prisoner as he made his appearance.

Scott quickly pointed to the man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, gasping with true excitement upon seeing his armour; "Ohhhhhhh-maaaaiiiii-gwwwaaaddd, you're a N7 destroyer!"

Recognized as a highly skilled solider who would have been trained at the Alliance combat academy in Rio de Janeiro, Scott was in awe. He instantly saw the man as the embodiment of his own original goals, the one man army and saviour of the galaxy that he could one day become himself.

Helmetless, but standing tall in the rest of his red and white-striped black T5-V battle-suit, the true N7 operative nodded with a remarkably charming smile; "That's right, my name is Robert Slater, commander and squad leader to these fine soldiers."

"My name is Teela'Shal vas Itnar," proudly announced the quarian, "but I'm sure you already knew this from your mission brief."

"Correct," replied Tullius, "my name is Tullius Nazario, this is Scott Lawton, Rebecca Watkins, and Tessia T'Loki. We were tasked with rescuing you and retrieving the artefact you discovered."

Slater seemed to look concerned for a moment but then flashed his smile again; "I believe it will be an important asset to the Alliance. The geth claimed it when they captured us, but I'm sure we should easily be able to get it back before our escape."

His line of sight then lingered in Rebecca's direction before glancing to the others. It was doubtful there was any intent in the look, but had she not been wearing a helmet, Rebecca would have been firmly looking at her own feet in this situation. This man's face was surprisingly handsome in her concealed opinion and although his armour hid his true body, it was likely he was well-built.

Turning slightly, Rebecca noticed Tessia was also staring at the man with interest before looking in her direction and revealing a cheeky grin. That grin no doubt signified the coming of a "girly-chat" after the mission, something Rebecca had to admit she missed since Takako left for Earth after Connor's death.

Scott peered in from behind Rebecca and Tessia, snapping them both out of their traces; "So where do we start?"

Leon waved a hand and rapidly spoke; "We should move quickly, likely geth remnants are on their way. Our equipment was taken this way when we were first captured, perhaps artefact is still with our weapons."

The Retrieval Squad led the way and, after a few uneventful room searches, they came across a locked door.

"I'll have this open in a jiffy," said Rebecca booting up her omni-tool.

"Which is still too long," snapped Teela'Shal, "out of the way, I'll do it."

Rebecca automatically squeaked and stepped to the side; "Ah, um, after you."

"There," announced the quarian, hacking the door with great speed and revealing the stash of their equipment.

Scott quietly leaned in towards the stunned Rebecca; "Must be a rival engineer thing?"

The human engineer simply shrugged and shook her head, trying not to feel upset while wondering what she did to cause such animosity.

Slater walked in first and recovered the helmet for his T5-V battle-suit, quickly completing his armour set before reclaiming his heavy assault rifle, a Cerberus Harrier, from a scattered pile on the floor.

"Awww," sighed Tessia quietly, "he's put his helmet on… does look badass though."

As the rest of the Retrieval Squad collected their weapons, Slater crouched over the large backpack near the corner of the room and peered inside.

A few seconds later, he slammed his metallic gloved fist against the nearby wall, lightly denting it in frustration; "Dammit! They took the artefact!"

"Had a feeling it wasn't going to be that easy," stated Grogg.

Leon looked puzzled for a moment and then raised a finger; "Perhaps they've hidden it in one of the other rooms?"

"No," said Slater, his voice still clear but sounding slightly muffled under the helmet, "I know exactly where they will have taken it. The reactor, they'll be using the power supply there to re-charge the artefact."

Rebecca overheard from outside the room and looked to Tullius; "I thought you said that place was decommissioned."

Teela'Shal lightly chuckled as she stepped back out of the doorway; "Looks like your recon isn't up-to-date. Upon landing here, we detected unusually high amounts of energy coming from it. The geth are most certainly up to something in there."

As everyone readied their weapons, Slater placed the pack on the back of his battle-suit, using similar technology to how standard armour 'magnetically' held weapons.

Grogg looked over; "Want me to carry the pack this time? You looked like you were struggling with it a few hours before we got caught."

Slater shook his head; "I was just tired, but now I'm fully rested. Even when we get the object back, it won't add much weight, but thanks for the concern."

Scott recognized the model of the backpack from the straight angles and glowing antenna; "Oh jeez, is that the standard objective container? That, which has the tendency to fall off your back upon breaking into even a light jog?"

Grogg laughed; "Slater doesn't run, in that suit he STOMPS! Like a Krogan! Bawhaha!"

Tullius looked concerned; "If the reactor is operational, we may face strong resistance."

"True," said his opposite team leader, "but our original objective was to obtain that device and I plan to fulfil it. I'll understand if you want to return back to base now you've freed us. The four of us will be able to complete the mission ourselves."

Rebecca instantly got 'yeah, we don't need you' vibes from Teela'Shal's 'hands-on-hips' body language towards her.

Tullius was quiet for a moment before Scott jumped in; "We're not gonna leave are we boss? With eight of us we'll decimate the lamp-heads and get the McGuffin before breakfast."

The turian rolled his eyes and looked at the infiltrator; "I wasn't going to abandon them."

"Yeeessssss," cheered Scott, raising his fist in the air.

"We'll accompany you," stated Tullius, "our side objective matches yours so we'll support your team and follow your lead."

Leon smiled; "Our large number will make it difficult to be covert, but being able to cover more ground and the additional firepower is most appreciated."

Slater turned to Leon for a moment, his expression hidden by the helmet but his voice taking a positive tone; "It's decided then, let's make our way to-"

The first order from the leader of the eight-person team was cut short as a large rumble shook through the entire ship.

"The engines," gasped Rebecca.

"You don't say," snapped Teela'Shal as she steadied herself.

Slater looked down the corridor; "The helm is this way, we can't let this ship take us away from the reactor."

Leon seemed panicked; "But even if we fight and gain the bridge, it may take hours to hack and learn the controls."

Scott rotated his shoulders then pulled out two grenades from his ammo belt; "Well then, time for us rejects to show you what we do best."

The infiltrator broke into a run down the corridor before anyone could say anything.

Rebecca's omni-tool flared into life as she began to run after him, turning to call to the others; "It would be the quickest solution."

Grogg, the very pleased looking krogan, cracked his knuckles; "I'll help with that!"

Tessia raced after them in a blue blur of biotic energy, also clearly quiet excited.

Tullius slowly turned to the remaining three, slightly embarrassed that his subordinates didn't wait for Slater's decision or command; "Well, they are enthusiastic..."

"Rejects?" asked Teela'Shal, picking up on what Scott said and wanting an explanation.

.***

The geth ship had crashed in spectacular fashion. Various internal explosions and some tapering with the guidance systems had caused the large craft to loop around and bounce across the landscape until it landed barely half a mile from where it had originally lifted off from. Now it lay motionless next to the crash-site of the Cerberus ship.

A door squealed open with a spark and an excessive amount of smoke poured out of the starboard entrance.

Scott was the first to emerge, jumping down from the tilted ship and surveying the scene.

Upon seeing the reactor not far away in the distance, he held up both of his hands and loudly exclaimed; "Nailed it!"

"Bosh'tet!" cursed Teela'Shal, dropping down and pointing angrily at the human, "you nearly got us all killed!"

"Eh? Narh, it all went to plan, no probs. It was fine wasn't it Becky?"

Grogg jumped down from the doorway with a dazed Rebecca clung onto his back; "I'll tell you when the world stops spinning… tha-thanks Grogg."

The krogan allowed the female human to gently dismount from the 'piggyback' before he laughed loudly and clapped his hands together; "My favourite part was when I smashed the heads of those two geth together."

Scott laughed, remembering the scene as the rest of the squad surfaced; "It was like you were playing the cymbals for an orchestra. Though I think my highlight was Becky uploading 6 zettabytes of cute cat videos into the mainframe."

Tullius rotated his neck; "My least favourite part was Scott using the team comms to sing."

"Going dooooowwwnnnn, in a blaze of glooooory," started Scott, the encore being instantly stopped by a few guns being raised in his direction.

Tessia giggled; "I enjoyed all the sweet explosions, we made some truly beautiful ones."

"Are you people insane?!" growled Teela'Shal, "No wonder you're called rejects, you-"

"Teela," interrupted Slater who was making sure his backpack was undamaged before returning it to his back, "although unorthodox, they did get us back to the reactor in the quickest way possible and while taking-out a further chunk of the geth force."

The quarian crossed her arms and muttered under her breath.

Leon pawed at the recently obtained scratch across his face during the geth-related scuffles; "Lucky we landed back where we started. Shall we move on? Slater?"

Teela turned to see Slater's helmeted head dipped down before rising again, her voice changing to one of genuine concern; "Rob, are you ok?"

The N7 Destroyer grunted and lightly shook his helmeted head; "Must be getting old, can't take a battering without getting a headache anymore."

Rebecca held her stomach; "Kinda wish all I had was a headache… I think I'm gonna throw up. All that tumbling…"

Scott raised a finger; "Sage-like advice - be sure to take your helmet off first."

"I'm gonna focus on decrypting that black box we found, it'll keep my mind off it while we walk."

As the eight-person squad headed towards the reactor, Teela'Shal became increasingly interested in Rebecca's side project, but bar glancing over to her now and then, she kept her curiosity secret.

Leon was also rapidly tapping away at his omni-tool, more out of boredom than anything.

Seeing that Tessia was curious, Grogg decided to fill her in; "He's always like that, needs to keep busy, high metabolism or some crap, barely sleeping, always working away, always… urgh… talking."

The salarian looked up from his tool for a moment; "I had already taken the liberty of downloading the schematics of the reactor for just this scenario. I've now sent requests to all your devices."

After the map was shared amongst the other seven, Tullius pointed towards the entrance to the reactor; "Looks like we'll have two guards to deal with."

Ahead were two modified geth soldiers with yellow armour-plating and unique fuel canisters on their backs.

"Pyros, and they've spotted us," informed Tessia, "they're slow but they'll be on us in less than a minute."

"May I?" asked Tullius, already tuning his sniper rifle for incendiary ammo.

"Be my guest," nodded Slater.

Scott watched on with excitement; "Extra points if you waste them both before they get in range to use their flamethrowers."

Tullius re-holstered his weapon for a moment before inputting a command on his omni-tool and then holding his arm out; "I'll accept that challenge."

Everyone watched as both pryos lost their shields in an arcing chain-overload, but no one was fast enough to look back and see the turian quick-draw his sniper rifle and line up for his follow-up attack.

The first shot from the M-92 Mantis rang out…

"You missed?" asked Scott, expecting one of the geth to have lost a head.

"Not exactly," replied Tullius, quickly reloading and lining up his next shot.

Everyone then noticed that the fuel canister on the nearest pyro's back was now engulfed in flames before his second shot pierced the tank on the back of the furthest pyro.

"Huh?" pondered Scott as everyone watched Tullius slowly walking off in an arc to the left so that he was now side-on to the unflinching enemy units.

"Ah," said Leon in comprehension, "Nazario has arranged the conditions and is now attempting a dual elimination of the hostiles utilising a single projectile, upon observation, assessment, and subsequent prediction of target movement."

"Come again?" asked Tessia.

"A trick-shot," simplified the salarian.

Lining up both geth, Tullius took a deep breath before pulling the trigger for a third time.

A shard of flaming metal ripped straight through the two fuel canisters causing both pyros to instantly and violently explode.

"Holy frikking crap!" exclaimed Rebecca, eyes wide under her helmet, "That was amazing!"

Scott burst out laughing and then pointed at his team leader; "Tullius confirmed OP, please nerf!"

The leader of the Retrieval Squad clapped his hands; "Most impressive, we are most certainly in safe hands with you backing us up."

Tullius simply closed his eyes and slightly bowed his head in thanks for the praise.

"Ho, ho, hooo," grinned Scott rubbing his hands together, "we are gonna kick so much ass. I hope there's like, a million geth in there."

"SCOTT!" yelled out Rebecca and Tullius at the same time, fearful of another jinx.

"I'm with him," chuckled the large krogan, "can't wait to scrap some more metal, hahaha!"

Rebecca gazed at the sky for a moment, knowing she wouldn't see it again for a while; "I have a bad feeling about this."

.***


	6. Chapter 5 – The guard

**Chapter 5 – The Guard**

Now inside the entrance of the reactor, the eight operatives carefully began to explore.

Overhead lighting and various machines were active, confirming that the power was truly restored to the building.

"Guess the geth really have moved in," stated Tessia.

"Like I said," retorted Teela'Shal sounding slightly offended.

As the group moved into a large unlit room, the door loudly closed and locked behind them, plunging them into darkness.

Scott was the first to speak; "Well that can't be good."

"OK everyone," said Slater, "torches on."

Just as he finished his sentence, the lights in the room flickered on to reveal that they were currently trapped in a room with a very clear threat.

Towering at twelve-foot high, and coloured in red armour plating, stood a geth prime. It's three 'eyes' flickered as it evaluated the intruders.

A series of angry sounding electronic squelches echoed out as the prime raised it's pulse cannon, confirming that the eight intruders were in trouble.

Scott looked to Teela'Shal; "Oh bosh-tits."

"That's not how you pronounce it, idiot!" yelled the quarian, running off to one side while firing her submachine gun.

The disruptor-charged three-round-burst fire from her M-4 Shuriken did nothing to perturb the prime from firing a large bolt towards it's prey.

Although the shot missed, the strength of the blast was enough to force the quarian into a forward roll before she rose back up and continued running.

"Spread out!" yelled Tullius as three rapidly fired shots threatened the team.

The moment there was a pause in fire, the turian worked on his omni-tool, activating an overload to weaken the prime's shielding.

A collection of sparks registered the hit, but looking at the predictive read-out on his omni-tool, it had barely made a dent; "Those are some strong shields."

Tessia launched a warp attack that made an audible thud against the now shimmering shield. The asari took a breath and then grinned as she readied her next attack, only to see the prime's shield spark from another overload and put out the light blue flames.

Feeling that her effort was being wasted, Tessia looked over to Teela'Shal; "Hey, you're messing up my biotic combos with your tech skills."

"No, you're messing up MY tech combos with your biotics!"

"The hell! I'm trying to-" started the asari.

Tullius interrupted, knowing he was the only one of the other seven that possessed even a small amount of biotic power; "Tess, for this battle, stick to weapon attacks only, save your strength for afterwards!"

"Understood," nodded the asari, the blue glow around her hands fading as she drew her pistol, aiming for the tall geth's three red 'eyes'.

"One, gap," muttered Rebecca counting the timing of the prime's pulse cannon attacks as Leon and Scott dodged about on the other side of the room, "two-three-four, gap."

The prime lowered the cannon and held it's free hand out, summoning a white spherical combat drone.

"Drone!" warned Scott despite it's appearance being rather obvious.

The white sphere moved back a bit before firing an omni-missile towards the squad, making them scatter further around the room.

After the sound of the explosion died down, Slater called out to Leon; "How's the shield doing?"

The salarian was constantly running his energy-drain program whenever he had the chance, stealing shield energy to boost his own; "Nearly depleted, should be able to attack directly in twenty seconds."

Tessia shot the combat drone twice, causing it to dematerialise and allowing the squad to concentrate on firing at the main target.

"Keep it up!" praised Slater as Grogg and Tullius dodged four more cannon blasts before retuning fire.

"Shield down!" confirmed Leon, the vague shimmering of protection now gone.

With eight team members all constantly attacking, everyone knew that even the top-grade armour of the geth prime wouldn't last long, but caution still had to be observed against such a dangerous enemy.

"Booyah!" yelled Scott running up to the back of the prime's right leg and firing point blank with his shotgun to maximise damage. Despite the direct hit, the prime acted as if it was being pestered by a small insect.

"Scott!" cried out Rebecca as she watched him narrowly miss a swipe from the prime's huge arm.

Grogg stepped up, activating the fortification program on his omni-tool to cause protective Foucault currents to spread over his bright pink armour; "That's not how you do it, lemme show you how it's done!"

The krogan roared a blood-thirsty laugh and then charged at the prime's leg, the shoulder barge almost toppling the large machine. The follow-up headbutts and punches caused visible damage but the geth stood strong.

Something small and black suddenly ejected from behind the prime's back but everyone was too distracted watching it's next move to notice. Grabbing it's pulse cannon with both hands, the huge mech practically batted the still-laughing krogan away before firing a volley of blasts.

Rebecca suddenly yelped and staggered forward, feeling like she was being peppered by a machine gun as her shield received countless small impacts from behind. Her instant reaction was to roll off to the side and turn around so that she could see what was attacking, her shield only just staying intact as she returned to a standing position.

She decided not to act surprised if it happened to be friendly fire from Teela'Shal, but the quarian wasn't at the right angle for it to have been so. Her eyes locked onto the true threat.

"When the hell did that get there?!" exclaimed Rebecca, recognising the small floating black device as a geth turret.

"Idiot," snapped Teela'Shal, "it was thrown behind you during Grogg's attack, keep your eyes open."

Trying to suppress her annoyance towards with the rude quarian, the human engineer held out her left arm, knowing that she was the only one in a good position to deal with the additional threat.

Clenching her fist, she then forcefully flicked out all of her fingers and caused an overload within the turret, instantly causing it to explode.

"Sweet!" cheered Scott, seeing this particular custom hand-gesture shortcut in battle for the first time.

Rebecca was secretly smiling at Scott's reaction to her technique but the smile quickly faded when Teela'Shal let out an unimpressed 'humpf'.

Everyone's attention was brought back to the prime as it fired four shots and then summoned a white combat drone again.

Teela'Shal called out to the team; "It's prioritising drone deployment, take it out as soon as possible and the prime will stop attacking for a moment to generate another."

"Well observed," commented Tullius, taking out the drone in a single hit and noticing that the prime's attack phase was interrupted so it could redeploy another drone.

Abusing this knowledge, the squad were able to focus their fire more frequently and soon the prime seemed to spasm, a digital cry echoing throughout the room.

"Take cover!" yelled Teela'Shal, "it's going to explode!"

The post-mortem explosion sent those who weren't already now on the ground, swiftly to it.

After the last broken fragment of the geth prime hit the floor and the room was quiet again, Scott sprung to his feet; "Well, that was bracing."

"Everyone alright?" asked Tullius, looking around at the team.

The rest all slowly returned to their feet, answering in the affirmative to the question as various personal shields could be heard re-charging.

Leon dusted himself off, briskly walked towards the door opposite their entry-point, and began hacking it; "A prime being stationed inside was quiet the surprise."

Tessia placed a hand on her armoured shoulder, sure that her skin beneath was likely bruised; "Bet it wasn't expecting eight of us to turn up at once, still, the geth must be really guarding something."

"The artefact… it…" grumbled Slater before shaking his head clear, "it's the artefact, they don't want to lose it again. I have no doubt that it'll delay or completely stop whatever plans they have if we take it again."

Tullius ignored the tinnitus he was currently suffering and nodded; "Agreed, the faster we retrieve the object and escape, the better."

"Grogg," cheered Scott remembering the krogan's close range attacks, "you were awesome."

The krogan laughed heartily; "That was fun!"

Rebecca rotated her shoulders from recent aches and added a side comment towards the nearby Scott; "Just remember you're only human, please try not to get so close to something like that again. You nearly got squished."

"You're right, I need a T5-V battle-suit like Slater, that'd be so sweet…"

"You're not listening."

The door opened with a shunting sound and two worried words from Leon; "Oh my."

The team turned to see a horrific sight I the next room, causing Grogg to grunt in disgust; "Looks like they weren't just guarding the artefact."

Surrounding the normal reactor machinery and piping, stood five long metallic spikes reaching high towards the ceiling. Each had a dead human body impaled about two metres down from the blood covered tips.

"Ohhh crap," stated Scott, recognizing the spikes and knowing the name they commonly went by, "dragon's teeth…"

Rebecca took half a step back in dread but was unable to look away.

The bodies looked twisted in agony, barely recognizable as human, their skin a blue-grey, riddled with cybernetics and what looked like raised computer circuitry in placement of veins. She correctly assumed that the spikes likely contained nano-machines that had re-written the genetic structures of the corpses.

Scott gently placed a hand on Rebecca's shoulder; "They're not human anymore, they're just husks. First time really seeing them right? This is how they're made… it's some freaky shit."

Tullius took a step towards the two humans under his command; "There could be more reaper units within this facility, both of you try your best to remain calm."

Both humans jumped as an eerie gurgling and moaning sound could be heard from above.

One of the husks had awoken and began to grasp at the large piece of metal piercing it's body, before pulling itself up towards the tip of the spike.

Scott gripped his shotgun, memories of badly-filmed zombie movies entering his head.

Leon watched on in awe; "Fascinating, first time I've seen the re-animation of the host body after conversion, simply fascinating."

Knowing that the husk would attack the moment it dropped itself to the ground, Tullius raised his sniper rifle and fired a precise shot, blowing half it's head off.

It slowly sunk back down the spike, truly dead now.

After the ringing of the shot, and the sound of squelching flesh coming to a slow stop on the spike, another eerie moan could be heard.

Everyone looked up but none of the remaining newly created husks were moving.

Tessia crossed her arms; "If that's you making sounds Scott, I will destroy you."

"Ahead!" warned Leon.

A lone husk was rapidly staggering forward from the dark corridors further on.

"More of them!" cried out Teela'Shal as six more appeared behind it.

Rebecca quickly used her omni-tool to switch her HUD radar to show movement; "There's even more coming in from the right!"

Seconds later, this was confirmed as eight more appeared from a side room, practically scrambling over each other to hunt the squad down.

Slater stepped forward and called out; "Both teams on either side of me, form a line and fire when ready."

After lining up with his team on the right, Tullius was the first to fire, using his sniper rifle to take out one of the furthest targets before it even remotely became a threat.

On Slater's command, Leon, Teela'Shal and Rebecca, all launched incinerate cartridges from their omni-tools, causing three husks to be engulfed in flames and igniting a further two nearby.

To Rebecca's horror, the flaming husks just kept on running towards the team but follow-up fire from Scott's M-8 Avenger assault rifle dealt with them.

Wild flames highlighted more husks entering the area, their shadows flickering like dark spectres against the surrounding walls.

Tessia used her biotics to lift and slam one target into a group of newly emerging husks, while Grogg happily flung himself at anything that got too close, punching and smashing the husks into barely recognisable mush.

Scott heard a whirling sound off to his left and his jaw dropped in awe. A compartment opened up from the right shoulder of Slater's battle-suit to reveal a small but dangerous-looking stinger missile-launcher.

"Oh my gwad," said Scott in excitement as he watched three miniature 'hawk missiles' fire out from the launcher.

The resulting impact took out a few husks that were grouped together and caused Scott to geek-out again; "I really need to get me one of those suits!"

Slater's emotionless helmet simply nodded towards him.

"So bad-ass," whimpered Scott to himself before feeling a slap on the back of his shoulder.

"Pay attention," warned Rebecca, allowing Scott the chance to react to a husk that was nearly on him.

"Ouh-shit!" panicked Scott, firing out a cryo-blast to half freeze the 'zombie' before shattering it's head with a swift strike from the butt of his shotgun.

A few explosions later, the entire squad were left watching Grogg wrestle with the last husk, smacking it back from a grapple before charging at it and sending the limp body across the room.

Scott looked around to everyone; "That wasn't so hard."

"Wait," said Tessia, still facing ahead, "what is that?"

A strange shape was crouched over one of the husk corpses, cast in shadow from the flames but becoming clearer as the fire died out.

It was a different species of husk, derived from mutated batarians, a 'cannibal'.

True to it's designated handle, it was feasting on the remains of the human husk on the floor, somehow gaining additional armour-plating from processing the flesh and synthetics it consumed.

"I got it," grunted Grogg, unclipping an inferno grenade from his belt and throwing it with accuracy far across the room until it landed just behind the cannibal.

The fiery explosion took out the creature and the surrounding dead bodies.

The eight-person squad silently scanned the area, looking for any more movement, until Leon spoke; "Human and batarian husks, intriguing, it appears that they are being created here."

A thought occurred to Rebecca; "The geth ship! We thought it was weird that there was a prison aboard. The logs said that several different species had all been captured at one point or another."

"Huh?" blinked Scott, trying to keep up with the thought process.

Leon explained; "Exactly, if not experimentation aboard, the geth were likely transporting subjects to this location to be converted into additional reaper forces for the war."

Tullius stroked his mandibles before gesturing to the Retrieval Squad; "I would agree, although it's strange that your team was captured near the reactor yet not brought directly here. Why were they holding you for so long?"

The salarian smiled as if he was happy that there was still a mystery; "Pleased that I'm not the only one curious about that fact. Many theories, but none I can validate."

Slater crossed his arms; "The situation has become more dangerous, but the objective still stands. We should split up into teams of two to cover more ground and search faster."

The rest of the Retrieval Squad turned to him but said nothing for a moment, Leon replying seconds later as if to simply break the silence; "Understood."

Tullius could feel the eyes of his squad upon the back of his own head and decided to speak up against the idea; "Forgive me, but wouldn't it be more beneficial staying in our large number. We've already proved that our combined firepower can take on most threats."

Teela'Shal looked from Tullius and back to her leader as if she was also thinking the same thing.

Slater reloaded his rifle and turned to the turian, his voice taking on an impatient tone; "You're free to leave if you disapprove of my commands. My team will follow my orders professionally, what about yours?"

Everyone turned to see the reaction, but Tullius was as calm as always, slightly lowering his head; "No disrespect intended commander, I apologise. We will of course follow your orders to the letter. If permitted, may I request that Scott is teamed up with myself?"

"Aww," whined Scott who had been hoping he'd be teamed up with the 'cool' destroyer or the very visually appealing asari.

Upon seeing Scott's reaction, Slater quickly answered; "Agreed, Leon's with me. Grogg I want you to team up with Tessia."

"Fine with me," replied Grogg with a shrug, guessing the order was to balance the two-person teams better.

Teela'Shal and Rebecca slowly started to look towards each other, realising that they were the only two left. Despite both of their faces being concealed, the quarian's disgust and the human's great concern came across clearly in their body language.

The quarian began to speak but was abruptly cut off by Slater; "No arguments, there are many chambers and we need to explore them all. I want us in and out as fast as possible, but we don't leave until we have that device. Understood?"

Everyone answered in the affirmative.

"Good," nodded Slater, "call-in to me when you find it… good luck everyone."

The large group began to slowly peel off into four small teams, each taking a different path through the maze of the large complex.

.***


	7. Chapter 6 – Division

**Chapter 6 – Division**

Tullius and Scott stepped over some charred husk corpses and entered a large side office. The connected rooms were noticeably cleaner than the previous areas, likely used for administrate work.

"Sooo," started Scott in a cheeky tone, unable to stop grinning under his helmet, "you got told off."

The turian gave a thoughtful murmur; "Yes, after imprisonment and the current situation, it's understandable that Commander Slater would be frustrated. It's also evident he's the type that dislikes failure. He clearly wants his stalled mission back on track, my questioning him in front of his subordinates was not a wise decision."

"Even though you made perfect sense," replied Scott more seriously now, "I mean, we don't even have a signature to track this thing, we're just wandering aimlessly."

Tullius nodded, his attention now on the read-outs from various desk monitors; "From his point of view, splitting up like we have will increase the chances of finding it faster, but without knowledge of what we're up against…"

"We could get ambushed by a marauder," finished Scott.

"That is one possibility."

"No, really, a marauder," pointed out the human as a tall shadow entered the room from the far end.

"Get down!" ordered Tullius as flashes of white fired through the air towards them.

From his crouched position, Tullius peered around the sturdy desk and glimpsed at the enemy before it took cover itself.

It was a 'harvested turian', clad in metal plating and Reaper implants, armed with a phaeston assault rifle.

Tullius began to feel what he assumed all humans felt when coming across husks of their own species. Disgust and dread welled up inside his mind, along with upset over one of his own being converted into such a monstrosity.

Nevertheless, it was now a deadly agent of the Reapers and no amount of psychological warfare was going to deter him from doing what had to be done.

Another volley of fire caused the turian to fully take cover again.

"What we do?" asked Scott as a single human husk also entered the room, already at a full run towards the pinned N7 Ops members.

"Well," observed Tullius; "the marauder obviously has more intelligence than the human husk's tactics."

"What you tryin' ta say?" frowned Scott as he watched the husk frantically clamber over upturned desks and debris.

"It's keeping us suppressed with gunfire while the husk rushes us. An effective combination, but I've studied these marauders since they first started turning up. Get ready to handle the husk, I'll handle the rest."

As the husk got closer, the marauder broke cover to stand and raise a strangely red glowing hand in the air. Ribbons of crackling red mist and energy arched from it's now clenched fist and surrounded the husk as it ran. The mist hardened into armour-plating causing Scott to do a double-take; "The hell?"

This was exactly what Tullius was waiting for. Using his omni-tool to cause an overload, the marauder lost it's shields and was vulnerable enough for an accurate head-shot to take it out.

It fell backwards, dead, it's arm still raised up in the air for a moment before dropping.

"Little help here!" cried Scott, now on his back, pushing the frenzied husk up and away from himself as much as possible, "It wants my brain-meats or something!"

Not wasting time to reload his sniper rifle, Tullius turned and rolled forward, omni-tools flaring into life on both of his arms and transforming into sword-like blades as he raised back up onto one knee.

With no armour around the husk's neckline, Tullius crossed his blades to either side before swinging his arms outward, decapitating the husk and causing Scott to yelp as the head dropped next to his own on the floor.

Quickly standing up, Scott kicked the severed head away and shuddered for a second before looking at his squad leader; "Wow."

Tullius nodded; "Surprised? I have a second omni-blade for close-quarters combat."

"No, it's not that, I've just never seen a turian roll along the ground before."

.***

Rebecca and Teela'Shal carefully stepped over the dead bodies of several asari littered on the wide mezzanine above one of the main reactors.

The human tried to calm her distress by rambling as she often did; "From their matching green and white uniforms, these asari must have been workers for this reactor, but they didn't go down without a fight."

Teela'Shal replied in a sarcastic tone; "You really enjoy stating the obvious don't you?"

Rebecca ignored this and continued her analysis, something her original squad were normally thankful for; "From the damage and… missing… parts, it looks like explosives were used? Missiles or something?"

"Do you always babble nonsense this much or are you just trying to annoy me?"

Rebecca began to wish that something bad would happen to her compulsory partner, but upon seeing a red targeting laser suddenly focus on the quarian, she wished she hadn't.

A small concentrated explosion staggered Teela'Shal against the wall to the side, causing her to scream and curse.

"Teela!" called out Rebecca, running towards her.

A second explosion shattered the quarian's shield and bashed her into the wall yet again, leaving her tremendously vulnerable.

Rebecca jumped forward at full speed, tackling her 'teammate' to the smooth but hard floor as a third explosion engulfed the human mid-air.

The human engineer opened her eyes and looked down at Teela'Shal, her HUD read-out showing that the quarian's shield was slowly re-charging and that her own took a considerable hit but would be fine.

"Get off me!" demanded the quarian.

"Eh?!" squeaked Rebecca, pushing off the floor away from her while still keeping low, adjacent to safety barrier along the mezzanine edge to avoid further attacks.

Teela'Shal slowly rose to her knees, inspecting herself while also keeping low; "I can't believe you! You could have ripped my suit!"

"I…"

"Do you know what will happen to me if it tears even a little?! You idiot!"

Rebecca couldn't help her body from shaking as she clenched her fist and punched at the floor with an echoing bang.

Her facial expression was hidden, but her voice certainly revealed that her introverted demeanour had finally reached a breaking point; "You… conceited… annoying, spiteful, little… bitch! I don't know what your problem is with me but I damn well know I don't deserve it! So you either get your shit together and work with me, or next time your life is in danger I'll happily leave you to get knobbled by the husks!"

Teela'Shal silently looked away for a moment as if ashamed, but it couldn't be confirmed due to the mask covering her face.

The human was still shaking, wondering if she actually sounded aggressive enough, but at least it 'seemed' to have the desired effect.

"It's a ravager," stated the quarian, moving to peek over the safety barrier and then quickly lowering herself to hide from the following volleys of fire.

Now full of curiosity, Rebecca scurried over to the barrier, gently peering over to the lower level; "What's a ravager?"

"Former rachni, transformed into mobile heavy artillery for the reapers."

The human was already disgusted from just looking at the large insect, it's frame embedded with lethal-looking twin cannons, but the description made her shiver and pull a face under her helmet; "Eww, gross, no, no. Why did it have to be rachni? Extra evil modded possessed rachni at that."

"I'm not a fan either. We should deal with it quickly…"

Rebecca noted the lack of insult or edge to the quarian's statement and grinned; "Ice and flame combo?"

"Agreed," replied Teela'Shal, pressing a few buttons on her omni-tool and then letting fly with a white cryo-blast cartridge.

As it sailed through the air and hit the oversized insect, Rebecca followed up by popping out of cover and clenching her fist before flicking out her little finger and thumb. Her omni-tool instantly spat out an incinerate attack to complete the tech-burst combination that she often shared with Scott.

Teela'Shal continued with some concentrated SMG fire to finish it off before it could counter-attack. On death, it collapsed in a puddle of steaming acid and caustic gas, the two large orange sacs at it's front bursting with a splatter.

There was unexpected movement as six large spider-like creatures scurried away from their dying host.

"Ewwww," panicked Rebecca, "those were egg sacs and, and, I really hate over-sized alien arachnids. They're coming for us!"

"Stand back and relax," said Teela'Shal calmly.

"But they're climbing up after us and if we lose sight of them they'll stalk us until our guard is down and then jump on our faces!"

"Trust me, these swarmers will be heading straight for us with no tactics, come here," beckoned the quarian.

Moving to stand next to the quarian, Rebecca watched her throw out a small black device to the ground a little distance in front.

Some panels on it folded out to reveal front-facing nozzle and a booster underneath, allowing it to become airborne, floating about a metre in the air.

The black sentry turret turned slightly as it detected the first two swarmers clambering over the barrier and released a stream of fire.

"You set it up as a portable flamethrower," squeed Rebecca as she witnessed the next four swarmers follow suit, exploding into puddles of green goo, "this is how everyone should deal with spiders."

After the flames died down, Rebecca ran a hand gently across the floating turret; "I… I want one."

"I call him Toasty," was the proud reply.

Rebecca's head span around in excitement; "I call my recon drone Fido. I though I was the only one that did stuff like that."

Teela'Shal chuckled a little and then paused; "Listen… sorry about before, I have my own… issues, and… thank you, for saving me earlier."

The human engineer prodded her two index fingers together shyly; "Ahh no worries, don't mention it."

"Something else, I may be able to help you with that."

Rebecca glanced to the black box attached to her waist that was being pointed to; "You can help me decrypt it?"

"We discovered the values of the recent Cerberus access codes had all been increased by sixty-four digits, if you factor that in…"

"Ahh!" exclaimed Rebecca now rapidly tapping away at her omni-tool, "No wonder my de-coder was taking so long! Excellent, thanks!"

.***

Leon was stood in one of the large control rooms, vacantly staring off into space and seemingly unaware of the threat looming behind him.

His eyes narrowed as a human husk dashed up to his blind spot, aiming for a tackle.

Leon couldn't be sure if the husk could feel surprise, but assumed it must have felt 'something' as it sailed through the air and hit the floor.

It instantly sprang back up and unleashed a flurry of slow but strong clawing attacks as if it desperately needed to rip the flesh off the salarian as soon as possible.

With every swipe, it's arms passed through the now slightly glitching decoy hologram, but the husk relentlessly continued trying to cause it damage.

The decoy began to walk on the spot as it was attacked, mimicking the real Leon as he marched forward, raising his M-77 Paladin heavy pistol and ending the persistent husk with a close-range headshot.

The hologram expired and vanished, leaving Leon free look over to the other side of the room to watch Slater deal with the last threat in the area.

The N7 Destroyer stomped his foot down on the ground, the shockwave staggering a marauder before Slater followed up with a fatal slashing attack with his omni-blade.

.***

"Where you going?!" called out Grogg, charging across the freshly made puddles of acid on the floor of the large cafeteria, "Don't wanna play no more?!"

"Yeeaahh, what's matter?" joined in Tessia, also chasing after the last two remaining ravagers that were trying to scurry away, "Only programmed to fire from a safe distance? Can't handle us up in your ugly excuse for a face? Diddums."

The two ravagers paused for a second to purposely burst their egg sacs in defence before continuing to slowly scuttle back.

This did not deter Grogg, who continued charging forward, the majority of the small swarmers all jumping towards the krogan and exploding with little effect against his powerful shields and fortified armour.

The less protected asari thrust both of her hands forward, creating a large stasis field on the ground. Upon touching the shimmering dome of warped space, the spider-like creatures instantly burst on the spot.

Running through the field herself, Tessia began to glow with biotic energy before delivering a powerful punch to the nearest ravager's weak spot, causing it to crumple to the floor.

As she shook off the greenish-brown blood and her extra biotic shielding faded away, she watched Grogg body slam into the last of the modified rachni husks.

"Bwahahahaaaa! Been a while since I've had so much fun," laughed the krogan.

A previously locked door inexplicably shunted open, releasing three human husks that instantly started running towards the two squad members.

Grogg stomped his right foot a couple of times; "More? Is it my birthday?"

Tessia reloaded her M-6 Carnifex as her stomach grumbled in hunger. She thought about some of her favourite foods as she walked towards the still active stasis bubble, knowing that she could have a rest from using her powers for a while.

The three husks tracked onto her and unwittingly ran straight into the field of stasis, instantly stopping them in their tracks. She raised her pistol, ready to deliver three separate headshots.

"What have you done?" asked Grogg with a hint of disappointment in his loud gravelly voice.

Tessia looked back to him; "It's a stasis field, basically they're frozen in time for a short while, kind of."

"Huh," grunted the krogan, "no challenge now, but sure I'll find my fun in it."

Without another moment of hesitation, Grogg delivered a shoulder barge to one of the husks, sending it's completely stagnant body sailing across the room. The second received a powerful running back-hand that had it's rag-doll-like flight concluded with a satisfying crunch upon colliding with a wall.

The krogan laughed; "Yep, still fun."

Taking the pause as invitation to have her own fun, Tessia levelled her gun at the remaining husk. One pull of the trigger left the husk headless, the body crumpling to the floor a second later as the stasis field vanished.

The serious look in Tessia's eyes faded as she skipped forward; "Sweet, now let's go find that artefact."

Grogg began to follow, cracking his knuckles; "And maybe some more reaper scum to knock around."

A loud noise began emanating from the hallway connected to the door that had recently opened, accompanied by two marauders stepping through and taking cover, ready to start a fire-fight.

"Hahaha," laughed the krogan, "looks like they really don't want us to go that way. Guess we get to keep cracking heads."

Tessia looked more concerned now as she paid closer attention to the loud thudding sounds still within the doorway; "Those sound like some very big, and very heavy footsteps…"

.***

Rebecca and Teela'Shal discovered a series of interlinked rooms and were searching various containers and lockers for their main objective.

"No luck again," grumbled Teela'Shal moving to the next room, "this is getting tiresome."

"Well, at least we're not getting shot at for a change."

"True, but I'm very much looking forward to leaving this place as soon as possible."

The two continued quietly searching until a three second jingle from a popular role-playing game sounded from Rebecca's omni-tool; "Black box is done. Want to see?"

"Read it to me while I continue searching, just the highlights."

Rebecca started scanning and flicking through the logs with small hand gestures over her omni-tool; "So… the Cerberus ship was transporting an artefact stolen from reaper-controlled geth. The geth gave chase and shot them down before they could escape with it. Ahh, the wreckage outside makes more sense now."

"Yes," replied Teela'Shal, "our mission originated from a tip-off that Cerberus had something important in their possession. Our spy was actually on-board, allowing us to track closely and retrieve the artefact from the wreckage shortly after the crash. Unfortunately, we were captured by the geth and they reclaimed the device."

"The logs mention that the geth they stole from were acting strangely, holding prisoners rather than out-right killing… speculation, speculation…"

Teela'Shal was now knelt down, hacking into a large safe-box that she had found in a cupboard; "Any data on the artefact?"

"Let's see… yeah, the image here… it looks like a dark grey… overgrown… alien-skin covered microscope? Yuck."

"That's the one," came the reply without any visual confirmation needed, "looks like it's made of some bio-material, creepy isn't it?"

"It was designated code name 'Item XXX', oh man, I'm already imagining the porn-related jokes Scott would come out with right now. Various tests were conducted, yadda-yadda... Oh sweet!"

"What?" asked the quarian, finding nothing but company documents and some credits in the safe-box.

"All the test results are here, including the exact frequencies it emits!"

Teela'Shal quickly stood and moved to peer over the human's shoulder, instantly tapping away at her omni-tool; "That's brilliant, we can tune in the ratings and detect it."

"Aww," smiled Rebecca, already one step ahead, "there's a cute little arrow indictor on my HUD and everything. Here, I'll share it."

Upon receiving the data and checking the co-ordinates, Teela'Shal's own smile turned to a frown of confusion beneath her mask; "That's weird, it's overlapping Rob's current location and moving with him. Are his comms down? Why hasn't he called in?"

"Huh? Slater has it?"

"Yes, no doubt," replied the quarian, quickly bringing up the direct voice-chat to Slater on her omni-tool, "Rob? Rob, come in."

"Oh no," trembled Rebecca after reading more of the report and quietly rotating her stance so her teammate could see the key phrase showing up on the display.

The quarian's heart skipped a beat as she read the words 'reaper indoctrination' just as Slater answered the call with a; "Yes, what is it Teela?"

Several questions and worries entered her mind but she tried to sound composed; "Just had a bit of bother and wanted to check the comms. No luck finding the device here so far, how about you?"

"No," came the reply, "we should keep going in deeper, it must be around here somewhere."

So shocked at his convincing lie, Teela'Shal spontaneously asked; "Are you sure?"

Rebecca began to hold her hands up as a sign of caution but it was too late.

Realising her mistake, Teela'Shal put her hand to her mask, wishing she hadn't said anything further. If Slater was really indoctrinated, the further questioning would seem suspicious and likely tip him off.

"Of course I'm sure, what makes you think I might have it?" asked Slater with only minor irritation detected in his voice.

The quarian tried her best to recover, acting-out a blasé sigh; "Just wishing we could get out of here faster, I really hate this place."

"I can understand that, but it should be over soon, get back to me if you have any luck," answered Slater, closing the channel.

The two engineers exchanged looks for a moment.

"Indoctrination is extremely potent," said Rebecca, remembering the warnings from her N7 training, "it's been causing governments to convince people to submit to the harvest, and navy squads to rip themselves apart… Is he hoping to have us randomly get killed here? Is that why he split us up?"

"Don't!" blurted out the quarian, her voice full of despair, "Just, it's… Rob would never…"

"I know, but he's not himself, I've even heard of… oh-ma-gosh, what's-his-name-Leon! We should warn him!"

Teela'Shal swiftly brought up a private message app on her omni-tool; "Discreetly…"

.***

Leon finished searching a storage room and returned to following his team leader as a small beep emitted from his omni-tool.

Upon reading the urgent message, the salarian looked back up to see that Slater had come to a halt and was facing in his direction.

With no clue what the human's expression was under his helmet, Leon simply waved his hand; "You okay?"

"Why do you ask?"

Leon sensed the man's paranoia and defensiveness, something that was certainly out of character and a further hint that the message he received likely had truth to it; "Just that you've stopped. Are we unable to move on? Road block?"

"What was the message?" asked the N7 Destroyer, nodding towards Leon's arm.

Determined not to raise suspicion, the salarian smiled; "Nothing important, a reminder I set myself to work on a project I have planned, can be ignored until after the mission."

Slater gave a low grunting nod as he turned and continued walking down the corridor; "Come on."

Glancing back down to his omni-tool as he began to follow, Leon noticed that the data for the reaper-tech had been sent, showing a clear indicator that the objective was extremely close to his current position and slowly moving.

His eyes locked onto Slater's backpack, the container which he now realised wasn't as empty as it had been made out to be.

As Slater turned ninety degrees to head down a different corridor, Leon averted his eyes and quietly gulped, fretting over if he had just been caught 'eye-balling' the pack or not.

With Slater now out of sight, the salarian breathed out deeply, trying to decide what his next move should be and also trying to come up with general conversation ideas to lower suspicion.

As Leon turned the corner, he was startled at Slater's sudden appearance directly in front of him, toe-to-toe.

In a split second, the salarian's first thought was that the corridor led to a dead-end, causing the man to turn around, but the searing pain in his lower gut instantly corrected him.

Slater leaned in closer as he pushed the omni-blade further through Leon's stomach, the blood-drenched tip through his back, dripping onto the floor.

"I didn't want to do that Leon," said Slater, a sense of confliction in his voice, "but, but you left me no choice. It's harsh, but I'm doing this for the greater good, you have to understand."

Leon grimaced as he coughed up blood, gazing at Slater's concealed face with large sad eyes, fighting the pain to utter; "Rob…"

Slater seemed to flinch at his teammate's calm reaction and retracted the blade.

The salarian cried out in pain and dropped to his knees, trying his best to let his final thoughts be of forgiveness, knowing that his murderer was not in control of his actions.

The N7-Destoryer's head twitched and lowered slightly, his voice proud but with a hint of concern; "I had to do it. It's not just me. You can hear the voices too, right? Keep them here, stay, stay… keep them here… It's not just me right?"

"You're…. indoc…"

"Don't speak, just stay still… the war will be better for it."

Leon could only watch on in despair as Slater slowly stepped towards him.

.***


	8. Chapter 7 – The cauldron

**Chapter 7 – The Cauldron**

"Oh crud," panicked Rebecca, finally taking her eyes off her omni-tool and noticing her helmet HUD, "how long have Slater and Leon's health bars been turned off?"

"Keelah se'lai," whimpered Teela'Shal, "that can't be a coincidence, I can't believe it but… what… what if something terrible has happened? It's my fault, I-"

"Teela stop! It's not your fault, it's that stupid device. Did you tell Grogg?"

The quarian shook her head, trying to compose herself; "He wasn't answering, but I left a message. I've done the same for your squad too."

.***

Tessia took cover and examined the gash on her left arm that she had recently received. It ached and stung, but the matted purple blood over her now ripped armour made it look worse than she believed it to actually be.

Her right hand fumbled with a medi-gel pack while she peered out.

The monster clunking around the cafeteria was designated with the name 'brute'. It's half-robotic half-turian head scanned the area as it's mutated and over-sized krogan body stomped through the room, causing tremors with every step.

Most beings in the galaxy would find this amalgamation of krogan, turian and reaper tech as a dreadful and terrifying nightmare, a true horror story. Grogg and Tessia however, saw it as an enjoyable challenge.

"It's time for some carnage!" bellowed Grogg stepping out in front of the brute with his shotgun raised.

An explosive blast from the krogan's shotgun tore through some of the brute's armour, but otherwise it didn't seem to have much effect bar aggravating the beast.

The brute swung an over-sized claw arm towards it's annoyance, who quickly stepped back just out of range to only feel the air pressure from the swing blast by.

Grogg's M-300 Claymore shotgun was powerful, but it had one major drawback. For most species, it was the extreme kickback the weapon delivered, but that wasn't an issue for the krogan, the main problem was the clip size. After each shot, Grogg had to reload, which left him wide open to attacks if he couldn't find cover.

It didn't escape the krogan's notice, that with each reload, his asari teammate distracted the brute's attention and this time was no exception.

With her arm now patched up, Tessia rose from behind an upturned table and fired three shots into the only vulnerable spot she could see, calling out her attack; "Shot it in the ass cheeks!"

"Bwhaha! Good work!" laughed the krogan solider as he loaded in heat sink.

The brute turned towards Tessia and then began beating at it's own chest while letting out a blood-rage induced roar.

"Stop whining!" jeered Grogg, firing his weapon again, this time into the monster's back.

With surprising speed, the brute turned again and then lurched forward, swinging with his large claw and connecting with Grogg's mid-section.

The krogan was launched backwards and onto the floor, his gun sent skittering across the surface, far from reach.

Not one to stay down, Grogg quickly got back onto his feet to see the brute scraping it's right foot on the floor, it's stance leaning forward.

"Oh, it's like that is it? Challenge accepted, heehaha," grinned the excited krogan, also lowering his head.

The brute started it's powerful charge forward, not even noticing a biotic blast thrown from Tessia impacting against it's shoulder.

Unknowingly taking Leon's designated role of sound-advice provider, Tessia yelled out; "Grogg don't! Keep at a distance like we planned!"

The warning was either ignored or unheard as Grogg charged forward; "This big bastard's going down!"

Due to the brute's large size and superior momentum, Grogg's charge was akin to a rugby player tackling a runaway train.

The krogan was carried across the room until his back connected against the far wall with a loud crunch. Grogg roared in pain, spitting blood into the brute's face before following up with a flurry of fierce punches to the monster's face.

Unable to get a decent wind-up due to being trapped against the now damaged wall and the body of the hulking reaper solider, Grogg started punching and headbutting at the scorched flesh between the shredded metal plating that he damaged earlier with his carnage attack.

An exhausted Tessia continued shooting from behind but noticed no reaction from her target; "Get off him you big oaf!"

Grogg was lost in his own blood-rage just as much as the brute, both roaring at each other and trading close but powerful blows.

Changing tact, the brute pushed forward with it's over-sized claw, squashing the krogan against the wall, more excruciating pressure added with every second.

"No!" yelled Tessia running towards them from the side now, only to be swatted away by the brute's free arm.

In that moment, Grogg glanced down and reached for his belt, knowing his time was up.

Tessia shook the dizziness off and got back up onto her feet just in time to see a grinning glance from Grogg; "It's been fun."

The krogan used the last of his strength to thrust his final inferno grenade into the brute's damaged chest and bellow out the words; "For Tuchanka!"

"Grogg! Don't-" started Tessia before she was forced to hold her arm up, shielding her eyes from the bright flaming explosion.

A few moments passed as the flames died down, leaving the asari to silently stare at the two burnt corpses before her.

Tessia had instinctively readied a medi-gel pack, but slowly put it away as the sadness she felt for her new friend morphed into anger.

Yelling out in frustration, the echoing cry notified some nearby husks that automatically began to rush towards the asari's location.

The expression on Tessia's face darkened further as she heard movement and she turned to run towards the advancing enemy.

.***

"Leon's reading is back on!" exclaimed Teela'Shal swiftly leading the way through various identical-looking corridors, "We have to get to him fast, he hasn't got long."

Rebecca studied the weak health bar as she followed; "If we can even believe this readout, with Slater's location still hidden, it's likely a trap."

"I know, I know," replied the quarian with great concern in her voice, "but if he can be saved, we have to try."

After navigating some stairs and a few more maze-like corners, the two engineers spotted Leon laid on his back beyond a small entrance.

Teela'Shal shifted her weight to her right foot in preparation to dash towards him just before Rebecca called out; "Ping on the motion radar!"

"Rob?!" called the quarian, only to be met with a raspy groaning sound.

Rebecca yelped as two husks broke out into a run towards them, her hand already instinctively reaching for her omni-tool.

Fido materialised just behind the attackers, distracting one with a jolt of electricity. It was enough to gain the upper hand, both creatures swiftly destroyed moments later under a hail of pistol and submachine gun fire. When it was clear there were no more threats, the two ran to Leon.

"Leon! Leon!" cried Teela'Shal, kneeling down next to him.

The salarian slowly opened his eyes but it was clear from the pool of blood and the lack of colour in his face that he was on the verge of death.

Pulling a medi-gel dispenser from her belt, Teela'Shal began to shake; "This will… help…"

Leon closed his eyes for a moment, solemnly moving his head left and right, signalling it was too late.

"No…" whimpered his old teammate, "No…"

Rebecca remained standing, allowing them to have a final moment together. Still very wary that another threat could emerge, she looked back at the entrance.

Her drone was still acting like a guard dog just outside, so that door was covered, but there were two others entrances that were wide open.

Teela'Shal already knew, but had to ask all the same to be completely certain; "Was it Rob? Did he do this to you?"

Leon grimaced in pain, only able to nod and sadly return a glance before he could no longer hold on.

Rebecca woefully inspected the scene as the quarian cried over the body and tried her best not to tear-up as well.

Her strong sense of empathy was abruptly over-written with a cold shiver up her spine and a feeling of dread.

The human had noticed the trailing blood smears on the floor, evidence that Leon had been dragged into the small room from the door opposite the one that they came through.

"Teela!" cried out the human.

Although lost in mourning, the shriek was so loud and urgent that Teela'Shal felt compelled to look to the source. Her head snapped back again after seeing Rebecca shaking and pointing at the opposite door.

There, just outside, stood the fully armoured frame of Robert Slater, still and silent, just watching them.

"Rob?" whimpered the quarian, surprisingly meek.

The N7 destroyer's head slightly moved and then paused for a second before his hand slowly reached to one side, pressing a button on the wall outside.

There were three loud shunts as all the entrances to the room slammed down shut, locking the two engineers in.

"Slater!" yelled Teela'Shal in a much angrier voice as she ran at the door, glaring at the motionless helmet on the other side via a thick window built into the door.

A loud buzzing echoed around the room, accompanied by a red light causing Rebecca to look up for the source.

Upon seeing what looked like red plasma being vented from the ceiling, the human did a double-take; "This isn't, wait. Are we in a reactor?! We're in a foiting reactor! How the hell did we fall for that?!"

Rebecca then ran up to Teela'Shal who was still facing Slater through the glass, looking for some sort of emotional response.

Pushing her to one side, Rebecca firmly pressed a gloved finger against the glass and yelled; "Only a complete dick traps their teammates in a reactor! Let us out right now!"

Slater didn't react for a moment and then simply turned around and walked away.

This time Teela'Shal pushed Rebecca to one side, yelling as much as she could through the glass; "Don't you walk away! Get back here! This isn't you! Fight it!"

After losing sight of the man, the quarian slammed a fist against the glass; "Bosh'te!"

"Priorities," called Rebecca, now rapidly looking around the interior of their death-trap, "escape now, kick his ass after."

"We can't," slumped Teela'Shal, "this room can contain an immense amount of energy, we can't blast our way out and there are no panels to hack on the inside."

"Soooo," thought Rebecca, clicking her fingers together several times to try and quicken her thinking process, "we need someone on the outside."

Quickly activating her team comms, she called out over the increasingly loud noise building up inside; "Scott! Tullius! Tess! Help! We're trapped in a reactor!"

Teela'Shal also attempted to reach Grogg, but both were met with the crackling sound of interference.

The plasma above their heads grew bigger and intensified, threating to flood the entire room in one big burst.

The engineers pressed their backs against the nearest wall.

"It's hopeless!" screamed Teela'Shal as the noise increased in volume another level.

Rebecca started rapidly slapping her own helmet; "Come-on-come-on-think!"

"We're going to get vaporized!"

"No wait, I got it!" exclaimed the human, suddenly dashing to the door they originally came through, "Oh-my-god-I'm-so-dense!"

"What is it?!"

Rebecca had her head pressed against the glass, looking out while she tapped away on her omni-tool; "My drone's still out there! I can't believe I forgot!"

Hope finally entered her teammate's mind and she ran to join her at the door; "You left it on guard mode? Genius!"

"There he is!" squeed Rebecca, tapping her foot rapidly while entering commands on the orange glowing display along her arm, "Fido! Here boy!"

The spherical drone slowly floated towards the door, getting stuck on the corner of a staircase for a moment before continuing it's relaxed journey.

An even louder noise filled the room, causing Rebecca to lose her patience; "We're gonna die here! COME ON YOU STUPID MUTT!"

Teela'Shal held her breath as Fido finally approached the door, slowly aligning itself against the control panel outside.

"Go-go-go-do-it-do-it-do-it!" panicked Rebecca typing in her final command.

Fido's sensors panned across the procedure progress bar for the reactor that had left the green and orange phase and was now nearly at the top of the red level.

Finally targeting the door controls, Fido's VI connected to the interface and, within a second, was denied two-hundred-and-fifty-six times from trying to override the doors.

At that point, the drone ran Rebecca's personal 'stuff-it' routine and sent a large electric shock directly into the system.

Both engineers yelped in surprise, fully believing it was the end, until the loud noise inside the chamber began to wind-down to a low hum.

Still pressed against the door, they both quickly looked back and towards the ceiling to see that the plasma was at a stable level, before proceeding to fall to the floor as the door suddenly jolted open.

Teela'Shal dusted herself off as she stood up, apprehensively laughing at her near-death experience.

Rebecca got up on her knees, threw her helmet off, place her hands on either side of her drone, and proceeded to shower it with several kisses; "Mwah! Oh Fido I love you! Mwah! You wonderful, wonderful life-saving set of zeroes and ones!"

The drone barked happily in reply before timing-out and dissipating, causing the human to fall forward, only just saving her face from smacking the floor by keeping her hands out.

After being helped to her feet, the two engineers shared a handshake before sombrely turning back to Leon's corpse.

.***

Twenty minutes later, Rebecca and Teela'Shal had been able to contact two of their teammates and had set-up a meet-point at a work station.

Rebecca was sat cuddling her newly re-summoned drone and smiled with relief under her helmet as she saw Scott and Tullius approaching.

"So," started Scott as he walked up to Rebecca and patted her shoulder; "Geth were shooting at us, reapers are trying to nobble us, and now you say we have IronMan trying to kill us too? This is turning into quite the special day, and by special, I mean shit."

"I'm so glad you guys are alright," said the human engineer, "maybe we should switch our comm-chan back to full open, having to wait ages because you're in combat before you reply is giving me the mad anxiety."

Tullius narrowed his eyes at Scott; "As long as a certain person doesn't keep using it as his personal karaoke channel again, I would agree."

"Unsure why you ever blocked my dulcet tones in the first place," shrugged Scott, "but I'll agree to this horrid ban of pure talent under the circumstances."

Tullius tweaked a setting on his omni-tool that the two humans accepted on theirs and then turned to the quarian; "I'm sorry to hear about what's happened."

Teela'Shal looked up from a monitor she was trying to distract herself with and nodded, weakly following up with; "Did either of you come across Grogg or…"

"Tess," finished Tullius, knowing the quarian had likely forgotten the asari's name or hadn't cared to remember it in the first place, "both of them are still unaccounted for, left another message for them."

Trying to be the voice of hope, Rebecca added; "They might just be running silent so Slater can't track them, or their readout system just got damaged…"

Teela'Shal lowered her head; "Or Rob got to them and purposely turned them off like he did with Leon to cover his actions."

"They're tough," replied Tullius, "I doubt even an N7 Destroyer could take those two out."

Scott sat on a ventilation system; "Can't believe I looked up to that guy, he was playing us from the start."

"You know how powerful reaper brainwashing can be," defended Rebecca after a quick glance to Teela'Shal.

Scott punched the palm of his left hand; "Yeah, well, it's no excuse, he was legit N7. Next time I see him I'm gonna-"

The other three members suddenly readied their guns and pointed them towards Scott who instinctively held his hands up in surrender.

For a moment Scott thought he had done something extremely insulting, or all three of his teammates were now indoctrinated and bent on killing him.

He then noticed his squad leader's line of sight and grimaced under his helmet; "He's behind me isn't he?"

After spotting Rebecca nod, Scott rolled forward and spun around on his knee, aiming his assault rifle along with his team; "Seriously, is it me? Do I summon trouble with my words? Am I some sort of chaos god?"

"I 'have' been telling you," replied Rebecca.

"Conversation for another time," muttered Tullius.

Slater was stood clearly behind the vents that Scott was sat on a moment ago, but he was unmoving and his weapon was still holstered.

"Rob… talk to me," tried Teela'Shal, her M-4 Shuriken stilled trained on him.

"I… I didn't want to kill him… you have to believe me…" said the seemingly emotionless voice under the helmet.

Tullius decided to ask a decisive question; "How about you take the backpack off, leave the device here, and we'll go home together."

"None of us are going home, I've released… them…"

"Them?" worried Rebecca, "More geth or reapers?"

"Drop the pack man," ordered Scott, "it's making you crazy and extremely creepy."

"I… I can't do that, it needs to stay with me, it's important, don't try to take it" muttered Slater as he reached for his Cerberus Harrier.

"Don't do it!" yelled Scott, ready to return fire.

"It's better this way, you'll suffer less…"

Just as Slater began to raise his rifle, he was suddenly slammed into the metallic wall to his right by a biotic blast. His helmeted head bounced off the solid surface and he stumbled forward over the vent, only just keeping himself on his feet.

Tessia revealed herself from around the corner, clearly looking very tattered and angry; "I'll tell you who will be suffering…"

"Go Tess!" cheered Scott.

"Sic'em boy!" called Rebecca to her drone, which hovered over to Slater's staggered body and sent several volts into his leg, causing him to leap forward towards the group.

Tullius dashed forward, a step past Slater; "I'm relieving you of command."

With what Scott thought was a greatly delivered 'action hero' line, the turian swung the butt of his sniper rifle into the back of the Destroyer's head, causing the man to fall unconscious to the floor.

Teela'Shal ran to Slater's still body, quickly uncoupling the objective container off his back and placing it a few metres away before returning to him.

"Will he be OK?" asked Rebecca.

The quarian slowly looked up to the others; "We weren't in the best condition when you first found us. Being exposed to the device for this long and trying to fight it has left him mentally fatigued, it's the only reason he's on the floor right now and we're not dead. I hope with some rest and our doctor's help… I, I don't know."

Tullius brought up his omni-tool, placing a map marker on the nearest exit for everyone; "I suggest we destroy the device and get out of here."

"Ballsy move boss," replied Scott giving a thumbs-up and moving, "can I do it? I'm already doing it."

The turian watched as Scott swiftly attached a sticky grenade to the backpack and nodded; "I'll handle command if they complain about their precious research needs. Without proper shielding, we can't guarantee we can get that thing out of here without being affected like Commander Slater was. Further more, I'm going to request the tactical destruction of this facility, it's clear it has become a reaper production factory. It must be destroyed."

Scott launched the backpack over into a mostly empty side-office to help control the following explosion, destroying the reaper technology.

Rebecca raised a finger, a little proud of herself, but choosing her words carefully; "While we… tended to Leon's body, I took a look at the OS for the reactivated reactor that Slater tried to crisp us in. In a splurge of forward thinking, I've already set-up a badly written routine that I can activate remotely once we escape."

"You have a 'nuclear melt down' button?!" asked Scott excitedly.

"Yes, although not exactly a nuclear melt down. Thankfully it won't wipe out the surrounding area or cause radiation due to how this place is set-up, but it's certainly going to level the building."

"Please let me be the one that presses your button!"

Rebecca nearly choked in surprise as her mind wandered elsewhere for a second.

Tullius began to help Teela'Shal pull Slater's unconscious body up from the floor; "Excellent work, Tess, where's Grogg?"

Before the asari could reply, Teela'Shal answered, placing one of Slater's arms over her own shoulder; "He's dead… there's no way he'd not be here right now."

Tessia slowly walked up to her; "It was a brute… it dealt him a fatal blow, but he damn well made sure the bastard paid for it. I didn't know Grogg for long, but I was proud to be at his side."

"Thank you…"

"Are you ok?"

The quarian took a step forward, and with Tullius' help, began to carry Slater on their journey to the exit; "Right now, yes, I'm stronger than you think. Let's get out of here."

With Scott, Tessia and Rebecca acting as an armed escort, straggling husks and cannibals that tried to attack were swiftly routed with little effort.

Although moving slowly due to carrying Slater, the team didn't stop until what sounded like a tortured woman's scream echoed loudly throughout the complex.

"Wha-what was that? Is someone else here?" asked Rebecca with a jump.

"Oh shit," panicked Scott remembering recent N7 operation briefings, "banshee."

The team turned to look back the way they came as another wail echoed.

Scott scanned the area, trying to spot the source; "They can teleport right? Is it messing with us or is there more than one?"

"No," whimpered the worn-out and clearly distressed Tessia, "no, no, no, no…"

Rebecca canted her head, very concerned that someone in the party seemed more scared than she was right now; "Tess? Are you ok sweetie?"

Tessia took-in a sharp breath, her pupils rapidly shaking now, before a third banshee howl made the team look around again for a moment, still unable to see anything.

"Huh?" blinked Rebecca as she turned back around, "Where'd Tess go?"

"Whoa, she moves fast, didn't even see or hear her," said Scott.

"Teeessssssss!" called out Rebecca.

"Tess," tried Tullius on the comms, "come in."

There was no reply.

Scott and Rebecca were both stunned, never knowing the asari to ever run from any battle, in fact, she often ran towards them, the stronger the challenge, the better.

Teela'Shal signalled to Tullius so that they could slowly lower Slater into a seated position against a wall; "They will have spotted us, that's when they scream, we won't be able to out-run them, it'll be better to stand and fight."

"We have to focus," stated Tullius, "I know Tessia is our teammate and friend, but she's running silent and we need to deal with the threat at hand together before searching for her. Hopefully she'll get out or at least find somewhere to hide."

"Shit!" called out Scott, levelling his assault rifle down the hall.

The others turned to see nothing but kept their weapons ready.

Scott's entire body was shaking with adrenaline; "I saw it, it was right down there."

For a split second, five metres closer than where Scott had originally seen the threat, a blue and white warp field flickered into existence and a grossly genetically-altered asari suddenly appeared.

The tall banshee slowly started to walk towards the squad, a biotic field shimmering around it's gruesome body.

"Spread out and concentrate fire," ordered Tullius, "if you can, switch to warp rounds to bypass it's barrier."

Teela'Shal stayed near Slater's slumped body and quickly switched ammo-types; "Firing!"

Her attack was quickly followed up by the rest of the team, but the biotic barrier seemed to absorb nearly all the damage.

The monster was still unflinching even when Tullius experimented with an overload attack.

Rebecca charged her arc pistol and fired a direct headshot to little effect before the banshee vanished.

With an audible draft of biotic spatial distortion, the banshee re-appeared closer within the corridor.

"Whoa!" said Scott before his surprise turned into disgust from being able to see the target more clearly, "How can one of the most attractive races in the galaxy produce one of the most hideous and terrifying reapers?"

The banshee teleported closer again, it's jump bypassing Tullius who had to turn to fire at it from behind.

Scott mixed up his attacks with a cryoblast, which spurred Rebecca on to follow up with an incinerate, causing it's barrier to visibly fade.

Rebecca was too scared to even think about celebrating this small victory, even more so when the banshee warped again, appearing directly in front of her.

The ex-asari's rotting skull-like face looked down at the petrified engineer before opening it's mouth and screaming directly at it's prey.

Rebecca froze in complete fear, unable to move or call out. She wasn't even able to feel embarrassed when she could feel a wet and rapidly warming sensation between her legs as she involuntary did something that she hadn't done since she was five years old.

As the ringing faded from Rebecca's hearing, she could recognize gun fire and then Scott's voice calling out; "Becky! Sticky nade! Get out of there!"

The human engineer's senses came back to her as the top half of the banshee's body turned to focus on the three that were attacking it from behind, revealing the flashing sticky grenade that was attached to it's shoulder.

Rebecca squealed in alarm as she turned 180 to run away and dive over a large metallic container.

The explosion sent bits of the banshee everywhere across the room, before the nano-machines within it's blood quickly dissolved the evidence.

There was silence for a moment before Scott called out; "Ya OK Bex? Sorry, I panicked. Wanted it dead before it got you."

Rebecca slowly peered over the slightly scorched container and held a hand up; "Oh god, I think I peed myself."

Scott laughed, believing it to just be a figure of speech; "Think we all nearly did more than that."

Realising that she hadn't really wanted to admit to the fact, and believing the thicker fabric of her current underwear would allow her to mask the incident, Rebecca laughed back; "For my first encounter with a banshee, I think that went quite well."

"Don't relax yet," grumbled Tullius, turning at a scraping sound.

Two more banshees appeared in the distance, one back down the same hallway, another up in the scaffolding above.

"This is really not my day," sighed Scott, "what I wouldn't give for an elcor with mounted cannons right now."

.***


	9. Chapter 8 – Let horde mode commence

**Chapter 8 – Let horde mode commence**

A teary-eyed Tessia was sat under the desk in a side-office, cradling her knees as she tried to stay as quiet as possible.

She rocked slowly back and forth as a twisted shadow marred the perfectly square light-source coming through the window, before it flickered away.

A banshee was stalking her, and all her mind could conjure were scenes from the last time she had felt this terrified.

.~~~

Tessia was slammed to the ground, her right cheek taking most of the knock as the figure she had been fighting for the last hour restrained her.

The attacker was another asari, closer to purple in skin-tone, white flecks on her cheeks and forehead, accompanied by a serious glare.

Tessia could feel a hand grasping the back of her neck, forcing her face down against the hard floor. A pang of pain then spread across her shoulder as the attacker pulled her left arm back and placed a knee against her back to stop any struggling.

"Just remember," glowered the attacker, "you asked for this."

Tessia growled in frustration, angry at herself for being so easily pinned; "I'm not finished yet."

Charging pent-up biotic energy around her free hand and her legs, Tessia performed a powerful spinning leg-sweep along the floor, more rotating her own body on the floor than actually attacking. The additional burst of blue energy exploding from her body was enough to break the hold, forcing the attacker to retreat back a few steps as Tessia flipped up onto her feet.

The purple skinned asari nodded at the escape; "Impressive, but this has gone on long enough. It's time I took you down."

"You'll be the one going down Petra," called out Tessia, commencing a flurry of biotic punches and kicks between the two.

Both perfectly blocked and parried for a solid twenty seconds until Petra connected with Tessia's jaw and then her gut, causing her to stumble backwards and scream in frustration.

The purple asari smirked, realising her prey was tiring herself out, but then gasped in shock as she watched Tessia quickly form a sphere of intense biotic energy between her hands.

With a loud roar, Tessia pushed her palms forward and fired the blast out towards Petra, her eyes wincing shut in exhaustion.

A second later, opening her eyes, Tessia continued to watch the trail of her attack blaze forward but could no longer see her target.

Movement caused her to look down in surprise as a glowing Petra glided on her knees under the warp blast and was already advancing. Using her biotics and the momentum, Petra was half back on her feet and suddenly rose forward as if flying.

There was no time to react before Petra's right knee connected with Tessia's chin, causing her to be flung backwards, landing on her back with a thud.

Before Tessia could even finish her groan of dizziness and pain, Petra straddled her body, trapping her arms against her own waist.

"Dammit!" cried Tessia, unable to move.

"You're mine," said Petra, placing her fingers firmly on either side of Tessia's head.

Petra flung her head down as if initiating a final head-butt, but the attack suddenly stopped as their lips met.

What followed was a long, firm, and passionate kiss before Petra sat up, allowing Tessia to free her arms; "I win."

Tessia smiled up at her sparing partner; "I'll get you next time."

"I'm sure you will."

Tessia pulled Petra back down to continue the kiss.

.~~~

The banshee wailed loudly, just metres outside the office that Tessia was holed-up in.

Her body began to tremble even more, her head rapidly shaking left and right, but her lips sealed tight.

.~~~

Tessia and Petra, dressed in matching dark blue and orange combat armour, pressed their backs up against the cold wall under the night sky.

"There's nothing here," sighed Petra, "this is going to take all night."

"Don't change the subject," pouted Tessia, "the only thing you've ever told me about your past before we met was just some vague story about a fight with a krogan on an exploding space station."

"This isn't the time Tessi."

"When will it be time? You talk about settling down with me but you never open up. We're on a mission right now fighting reapers. Reapers! Nightmares of legend! This war could mark our final days and I… I've never been so afraid."

Petra's heart sank as she saw the fear in her lover's eyes; "Oh sweetie… I… I know I've never opened up and you know it's nothing to do with what others will think, but… I still need more time."

"It's been seven months… please…"

Petra took a deep breath and placed a hand to her own chest; "Alright, after this mission, we'll get back, break open some wine and I'll tell you everything. All you need to know right now is… I love you."

.~~~

The office desk that Tessia was hiding under was flung into the ceiling by a biotic explosion, causing the asari to roll along the ground and scramble to her feet.

Barely two steps later, the banshee teleported directly in front of her, stopping her in her tracks.

With a wave of it's crooked arm, it created a warp field to surround it's victim.

Tessia began to unwillingly float upwards until her line of sight matched the creature's, her fearful eyes gazing into the darkness before her.

.~~~

Tessia's first encounter with a banshee was the most horrific encounter she would ever have.

"Petra…" whimpered Tessia to the disfigured monster in front of her, "no, please…"

The banshee wailed loudly at it's prey, it's biotic energy flaring up.

Tessia raised her gun, tears streaming down her cheeks; "Please don't make me kill you!"

.~~~

Tessia hung helplessly, tears now blurring her vision; "I…"

Her line of sight trailed down as the banshee pulled back it's right arm, flexing it's sharp skeletal fingers, poised to skewer the living asari straight through the gut.

Tessia's own biotic aura flared up and she cried out, just as the banshee thrust it's arm forward like a spear.

Although it was extremely difficult, Tessia forced her left arm down to grab the banshee's wrist at the last second, it's sharp nails only just breaking through her armour.

The banshee wailed loudly in the asari's face, but this only spurred her resolve, channelling as much biotic energy as she could into her right fist.

With her own scream echoing out, Tessia quickly raised her hand and released a powerful blast directly into the creature's face.

At the expense of more energy than she should have sensibly been using, Tessia kept the blast going until the monster's head was completely vaporised.

Falling to her knees, Tessia watched as the banshee began to rapidly decompose into black ash that simply vanished like it was never there.

Now completely alone, the asari adapt allowed herself to shed a few more tears over the memory of her lost love.

.***

Several rooms back, another banshee rose from it's knees with a wail, a large burst of biotic energy causing Scott and Teela'Shal to be flung backwards.

Tullius reload his sniper rifle and narrowed his eyes; "It's regenerated it's barrier!"

"We just brought that down," complained the quarian.

Scott jumped up into a stance and continued firing; "Die you saggy, wrinkled, asari granny beast!"

With a wave of the banshee's arm, a chaotic ball of biotic energy was created and slowly travelled towards Teela'Shal who was just getting back up onto her feet.

Holding her hands up in defence, the quarian braced for impact, only to be shocked at seeing Tullius rushing towards her, aiming to push her out of danger.

Just before he reached her however, the warp ball changed direction as if homing in on a new target.

Slamming into Tullius' chest, he gurgled a cry and fell to his knees.

Teela'Shal quickly threw out her sentry turret and opened fire at the banshee to add to Scott's attacks, finally taking down the threat as it gave out one last haunting scream.

"Thank you. Are you alright?" asked Teela'Shal.

Detonating his tech armour to remove the biotic flames, Tullius looked around as his shield recharged; "I'm OK, no problem."

Noticing the drying dark blue blood on the turian's face from an earlier attack made the quarian wonder if this was the truth, but she decided to stay quiet as Scott approached.

"Tulli is well-hard," laughed Scott, "no fazing him."

Tullius reactivated his tech armour; "Please don't call me Tulli. Now, where did the other banshee go?"

Rebecca's voice crackled over the comm link; "Guys… you have to see this."

.***

Moments later, the four of them were stood looking up at a gantry where a lone banshee was quietly stood facing Rebecca's drone.

"I summoned Fido to cover me while I was recharging my shield," explained Rebecca, "and when I was ready, I noticed the banshee was just… staring at it, like, hypnotized."

"Behold," laughed Scott, "the power of hypno-ball!"

"Fascinating," stated Tullius, slowly shaking his head.

Teela'Shal raised a long finger; "You think it affects all banshees, or just this one?"

"We might just be getting lucky here," guessed the other engineer.

Scott followed suit, also raising a finger; "Think you can make Fido flash different colours and play disco music?"

"Tempting," grinned Rebecca, "but I think we should just sneak on by."

"Agreed," said Tullius, picking up the still unconscious Slater with Scott's help, "as this reactor was mostly manned by asari, there's a chance there were many more banshee candidates when this place was taken over."

Tessia's voice suddenly came through on the team communications; "Hey guys, um, sorry I freaked out and ran off there. I'm OK now."

"Tess," smiled Rebecca, "I'm glad to hear you're alright."

"I'll head to your position now, but… then can we get out of here?"

"Of course, Tullius has already signalled Kevin, we just need to get outside."

The sound of gun fire could be heard over Tessia's signal; "I've got hostiles, I'll sort them out, see you soon."

"Hooo-lee crap," said Scott, struggling to turn his head with one of Slater's arms around the back of his neck, "look at the radar, we have an army chasing us."

Tullius held Slater's other arm around his own neck as they both carried him, and awkwardly checked his free arm's omni-tool while continuing to move forward; "Fortunately they're coming from behind, we should keep moving, make contact with Tess, and then evac."

Teela'Shal peered back and stuttered upon seeing multiple doors open in the distance, each revealing various geth and reaper units breaking out towards them; "W-what will we do? There are hundreds of them. Even if you weren't carrying Rob, we'll never outrun them. How are we going to survive this?"

Rebecca dodged a missile and some early shots before looking around the surroundings, making sure the coast was clear ahead; "There's a hold over there. We could all hide in a cargo container and only shoot when something comes near. We'd be trapped but they'd only be able to come at us from one direction. We could funnel them."

Scott shook his head as he and Tullius increased their pace with the unconscious Slater; "No way, I ain't doing no 'box of shame' tactics, we stand, we fight."

Tullius felt a few stray shots register against the back of his armour's shielding; "Unlikely we have enough ammo anyway, best to forge forward. Kevin, do you read? We need immediate extraction, it's doubtful we can get outside."

Kevin's voice came in clearly to the squad; "I hear you. There's roof access for loading close to your position, I can drop down into the reactor from there, it should be big enough. ETA ten minutes."

A map marker appeared on Rebecca's HUD; "That's not too far away! We can do this!"

"Behind us!" yelled Teela'Shal, throwing out her sentry turret over the top of everyone's head.

Rebecca also summoned her drone to distract the faster units that had caught up to them.

As the automated defences attacked the humanoid-husks and geth troopers, the squad continued on for a few minutes towards the extraction point.

"Nice of you to join the party," called Tessia who was already there and just finishing off a geth pyro, the canister on it's back violently exploding.

Scott helped Tullius place Slater down in a seated position behind a control station; "Who knew an N7 Destroyer would be so heavy, ouuh, my back."

A shot whizzed between their heads and they instantly split in opposite directions to find cover.

"We've got a solid wall behind us," stated Tullius, noting the circle on his omni-tool radar that estimated the extract zone, "we're going to have to bunker down and hold the line. Scott, close-range, the rest of you mid, I'll take long-range. We'll adapt if required."

"At the Annex, they got this platinum difficulty level where a mix of enemies come at you in huge waves," explained Scott as he finished off a marauder with rapid well-aimed shots from his M-8 Avenger, "this is feeling a lot like that."

Tessia grinned as she slammed a geth trooper into a cannibal from a distance with her biotics; "Is that another high score challenge I hear?"

Scott switched to his shotgun, blew the head off of a husk that was rushing him, and then called back over; "Don't think I'll be able to keep count with this lot. Besides, we're all knackered and overwhelmed, probably safer to concentrate on surviving."

Rebecca clenched her fist before flicking out all of her fingers to quickly cause an overload burst in a geth hunter's shield; "Did Scott just say something sensible? That's suspicious. Are you indoctrinated?"

"One does not simply disrespect platinum mode," replied Scott, throwing a grenade out.

Kevin's voice came over the comms; "ETA five minutes."

Explosions caused the two engineers in the squad to duck down behind cover.

Seeing them pinned, Tullius followed the direction of the attacks and spotted a line of geth rocket troopers and reaper ravagers at a distance. He began work on sniping them as they continued to bombard the extraction zone, slowly allowing his team to continue their defence.

The dog-like growling of Rebecca's drone indicated that a cloaked geth hunter was in the vicinity as it floated over towards Scott and sent a shock at what seemed like mid-air.

The hunter appeared and spasmed for a few seconds before Scott de-cloaked himself just behind it, firing his shotgun at point blank range to great effect.

Teela'Shal launched a cryo-blast cartridge that impacted and splashed out across a few husks before she threw out her sentry turret to pour a stream of flame at the frozen targets.

Kevin's concerned voice could be heard again; "Slight delay peeps, I'm currently dodging the pulse blasts from a freaking Colossus out here! When did you attract the attention of a geth heavy walker?!"

"We're so famous," moaned Scott.

"Gonna try and divert it a bit before coming back around, hold on."

"Hold on he says."

Tullius began to pick off several geth bombers that were hovering down from the ceiling pipework, stopping them from flushing the team out with aerial bombs.

Tessia shook off what felt like dehydration, fully aware that she had been overusing her powers but also concerned about her thermal clip reserves. She began to use stasis bubbles to freeze as many targets as possible before then delivering precision headshots with her Carnifex. This technique gave everyone a little more breathing space, and limited wasting any shots, but was still exhausting.

"Gah!" cried out Scott, firing his shotgun in retaliation.

Rebecca looked over to see him crouched down waiting for his shield to recharge, his armour looking severally damaged; "You OK?!"

"Yeah, something sniped me while something else snuck up on me, I got it though. Don't worry about me, game on."

Everyone's comms beeped as Kevin called in again; "I'm just a minute away, just… what? No way! The hanger door won't respond!"

"What?!" asked a frustrated Tullius, sniping a cloaked target.

"Don't get your mandibles in a knot, it's not my fault, reapers must have reprogrammed it… hang in there I'm gonna try something."

"This just gets better," laughed Scott as he punched a husk away and blasted it with his shotgun.

"I'm out!" cried Teela'Shal, dropping her now useless SMG and focusing on her tech powers.

A loud screeching wail echoed throughout the chamber causing all five team members to call out; "Banshee!"

"Oh my," whimpered Rebecca as she fired her pistol at more advancing geth, "I can see three of them teleporting towards us. I really hope-"

She was cut off as, what she could only assume was a runaway train, slammed into her and flung her across the room.

Everything was black for a second but the engineer fought to stay conscious, the great pain she was feeling now helped her with that but it was hard to concentrate.

"A brute just hit Becky" called out Teela'Shal to the others.

"Is she OK? How the hell did THAT sneak up on us?" yelled Scott.

Rebecca strained her arm to summon Fido in guard mode via her omni-tool as she tried to make sense of the world around her.

Her HUD flickered, but thankfully didn't completely disappear on her. The readings showed that her shield was depleted and didn't seem to be recharging, but at least the red dots surrounding her on the radar had now vanished, surely due to her teammates.

The pain down her entire left side faded a noticeable amount, she guessed either a medi-gel system kicked in, or that her body was beyond severely damaged.

A quick wiggle of her toes and fingers allowed her to resume her normal breathing.

"We got the bastard Bex!" called Scott's voice as he stood on top of the blue-flame-engulfed brute corpse, firing one last round into the back of it's head.

"Come on, you're alright" said a voice, "I'll help you up."

Rebecca tried to ignore the lingering pain as she was helped to her feet, trying to focus on the face of her aid.

When she saw who it was, she yelled in panic; "Scott!"

Scott was already running over, switching out his depleted shotgun and now aiming his rifle at Slater's head as he stood next to Rebecca; "You touch her and I will end you."

Tullius was some distance away but was aware of the situation. The moment there was a safe gap in the horde rushing the extraction zone, he aimed his sniper-sights on Slater's head.

Slater slowly let go of Rebecca's arm and started to raise his hands; "It's OK, I wasn't going-"

"Get away from her right now," ordered Scott, gripping his rifle tighter, shaking it slightly towards him, "I'm not joking."

"Behind you!" warned Slater.

Scott felt more angry than insulted; "You think I'm stupid? I'm not going to-"

"Behind you!" repeated Rebecca raising her pistol.

Without even looking, Scott dived to the ground and into a roll before spinning around onto one knee; "Déjà vu."

A banshee that had been a few metres behind Scott suddenly appeared in his previous position, swinging it's arm out too late to catch the human.

Rebecca released the trigger on her charged arc pistol and followed up an overload, staggering the banshee. The almost completely synchronized rifle fire from Scott, headshot from Tullius, and barrage of hawk missiles from Slater, finished the hideous creature off in record time.

After it's final death scream during it's disintegration, Scott turned with his rifle raised again at Slater, slightly less tense as he noticed Rebecca had generated Fido in guard mode nearby; "Still not trusting you."

The missile launcher compartment on Slater's shoulder closed and his head lowered; "I don't blame you..."

Scott slowly stood up and began to lower his rifle, he was about say something but was puzzled as to why Rebecca was running towards him, screaming his name in fear.

'Get down? Is she saying…'

An instant later he felt the impact against his back, sending him flying forward off his feet.

A second large plasma bolt seared through the air, clipping Slater's shoulder and sending him spinning against the wall nearby.

Scott hit the ground hard as the third bolt narrowly missed Rebecca.

The engineer yelped as she looked across to what just disabled if not killed two of her squad.

The geth prime slowly stomped forward, it's targeting system now locking onto Teela'Shal who could only run and dive for cover as other geth units started to flank her position.

"No…"

Rebecca's gaze then scanned for Tullius, finding him holding his own gut with one hand, the other using an omni-blade to slash at the mob of husks overwhelming him, his armour covered in his own blue blood.

"Please…"

Tessia was at the other side of the extraction zone, throwing her now empty pistol at the enemy and having to rely on her biotics, a grenade explosion forcing her to the ground with a thud.

"Don't…"

Rebecca was sure Kevin was saying something over comms, but she couldn't focus on his voice. Instead she found herself running and dropping to her knees in front of Scott's still body, shaking his shoulder; "Scott, get up, this isn't funny."

She suddenly gasped as she saw his back, his actual bare back, covered with a large scorch mark that blistered his skin. The prime's attack had gone straight through his shield and had completely destroyed the armour that had been covering his spine.

"Scott!"

It looked awful, but Rebecca tried to calm herself. Although the man was unconscious, her HUD told her that he was still breathing, but only just. Glancing at his back again, she took a small comfort that it wasn't any worse.

There was a deafening explosion above Rebecca's head and she instinctively bent over Scott's body to protect him from the debris.

She tightly closed her eyes, full in the knowledge that without her own shield functioning, she'd likely take a lot of damage if hit by any of the falling scaffolding and concrete.

After seconds of disbelief that she hadn't been clocked over the head yet, she opened her eyes to spot two armoured boots at the other side of Scott.

Slater was stood over them both with his arms out, trying his best to stand still as rubble clattered off his shield and armour.

Rebecca's world was suddenly bathed in a white light, confusing her for a moment before she realised the source belonged to the landing light of the transport shuttle hovering down from the large hole made in the ceiling.

"All board!" called out Kevin's voice.

Now just inches from ground level, the shuttle side door flung open, revealing the pilot stood next to a supply pylon.

"Let's go!" yelled Kevin, throwing out a few grenades towards the reaper forces and then proceeding to wield two assault rifles at the same time.

As Rebecca and Slater started to lift Scott up and take their first steps, Teela'Shal nimbly dashed by and leapt into the hold of the shuttle. Turning around, she threw out her sentry turret and accepted one of the rifles Kevin offered her to provide covering fire.

The moment Scott was placed in the shuttle, Kevin passed his remaining rifle to Slater and dashed back to the cockpit.

As Slater bombarded the field with missiles and gunfire, Rebecca tried her best to aim incinerate cartridges at the enemies chasing Tullius.

The turian was badly injured, hobbling as fast as he could.

"Come on!" warned Kevin over comms to the remaining two, "We can't stay here."

Geth and reaper troops shot at Tullius' back, bringing down his shield with a shattering sound.

"No!" yelled Rebecca, noticing that a marauder was lining up a shot to finish him off.

"Tullius!"

The turian knew that desperate cry. He was likely in great danger, but he didn't have the strength for any evasive manoeuvres. It was taking all his strength just to move forward.

The marauder pulled the trigger just as Tullius entered the effective radius of the supply pylon on-board, instantly regenerating his shield a second before the blast hit him, sending him stumbling into the shuttle.

"Are you alright?!" panicked Rebecca.

"I will be once we're all out of here," replied Tullius, readying his sniper rifle and already beginning to pick off the enemy units blocking Tessia's escape.

The asari left a stasis bubble in her wake to trap most of the units chasing her and with the able squad members covering her run, she leapt into the shuttle as it slowly started to rise.

"We're all in!" cried Rebecca.

"Hold onto your butts," yelled Kevin increasing the lift speed, "it's going to be a bumpy ride."

"Tess," said Tullius moving his head to the side as stray blasts from below hit the side of the shuttle, "can you create a barrier?"

The asari stood before the still open side hatch and held out her hands, creating a biotic barrier in front of herself that spread to cover one side of the shuttle; "I… I think so…"

Tessia gritted her teeth to maintain the shield as the geth prime fired directly at it just before they broke clear of the reactor.

Falling to her knees, Tessia wiped her brow and breathed deeply as the barrier vanished.

The shuttle door started to close as Kevin called back; "Hang tight!"

Rebecca, now helmetless, sat on her knees next to Scott, keeping his body from sliding as the shuttle took a dive at an angle. The rest of the passengers only had a moment to react and steady themselves.

A loud buzzing-like sound rushed by outside.

"What's happening?" asked Teela'Shal.

Kevin replied but he sounded like he concentrating on the task at hand; "Remember that Colossus I was talking about? I showed it some moves and tricked it into blowing a hole in the roof so I could get to you guys. It's now pissed and shooting at us. Heads up again!"

The shuttled lurched to the left with a scraping sound.

"Um, that one might have hit us," informed Kevin, "can't tell what the damage is, the damage report system has been damaged. I think we're at a safe distance now though…"

Tullius nodded to Rebecca; "We're clear, bury that place."

Swiping a few commands on her omni-tool, Rebecca brought up the program signified with an angry looking emoji. Without further thought, she ran the routine, causing several chain-reactions within the reactor.

Kevin chuckled to himself as he watched the massive eruption take out the reaper nest; "You guys always make the best explosions."

"Mission complete," sighed Tullius with a wince as Tessia tended to his wounds.

Out of paranoia and without argument, Fido was summoned next to Slater as Teela'Shal helped him take his helmet off.

The man was quiet, placing his head in his hands and closing his eyes tightly.

The quarian couldn't find any words and so turned to her fellow engineer who was currently putting her glasses on; "How's Scott doing?"

Noticing that Rebecca seemed preoccupied, Tessia answered, trying to stop the awkward silence; "Scott will be fine. He's survived worse than this. There was this one time…"

Rebecca took Scott's helmet off to allow him to breath better, and then lightly rubbed medi-gel onto his back, phasing out all the following conversations, her attention fully on the man laid before her.

.~~~

"Yeah," said Scott sat in the Defiant's cafeteria, a sombre look on his face, "love or simple attraction can make things complicated or hurtful on the field, but sometimes, especially with what's happening right now, it can be a comfort and make you stronger."

If only he knew.

Scott raised his gun at Slater as Rebecca's life seemed threatened; "You touch her and I will end you. Get away from her right now!"

Did he feel the same?

Scott was flung forward off his feet like a ragdoll after a blazing pulse blast hit him from behind.

Did he nearly die… again?

.~~~

"You die…" whispered Rebecca, unheard by the squad over the engines and conversations, "and I will be very upset with you."

She looked at his resting face for a while, taking in every little feature, before leaning closer, closing her eyes, and whispering as quietly as she could; "I love you."

"Huh?" murmured Scott, half opening one eye in a daze.

Rebecca's shocked squeak and a thudding sound made the other squad members turn to see what was wrong.

All they saw was a surprised looking engineer resting one hand on Scott's head as if she had just dealt him a karate chop.

The young women realised what she had done and held both hands to her mouth; "Oh-ma-gosh Scott! I'm so sorry!"

Scott was unconscious once more.

.***

[Location: Medical Bay, The Defiant]  
[Hours later…]

Scott sat up against two rearranged pillows in the bed that he was rapidly growing bored of, thankful for the company now that his teammates were allowed to visit him.

"I brought you choccies," smiled Rebecca, sat in her mundane clothing on one of the three chairs next to the bed, holding out a flat purple box.

"Yay! Just what I need, thanks," smiled Scott, opening the box and quickly eating a few of the fancy-looking chocolate pieces.

One of the chocolates in the box began to glow with a biotic aura before it floated a little way and into Tessia's open mouth.

"Chocolate thief!" gasped Scott.

The asari chewed quickly, swallowed, and grinned; "You still owe us dinner remember?"

The patient laughed; "As if I'd forget. Well, doc says I'm patched up and can go soon, so maybe tonight?"

"Sounds good," smiled Tessia, clapping her hands together.

Scott looked between the other two team members and raised the box slightly with a hum.

Rebecca shook her head with a smile.

The turian gestured towards Rebecca; "Watkins was thoughtful enough to get me a small treat that would be more agreeable."

"Ah, yeah," remembered Scott, "it's weird that sometimes I completely forget you're a completely different species."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Rebecca looked around the room for a moment, a hand resting on her scarred arm in memory; "Not exactly the same, but this reminds me of the time you came to visit me after the last Omega trip."

Scott finished eating another chocolate; "We do end up in the infirmary quite often… How are the other two doing?"

Tullius answered the question; "Slater is being kept under strict observation, no one can be sure if he is still under the reaper's influence. I'm sure he will be involved in numerous tests. Teela has visited him, but she has been reassigned to a new squad now."

"Wonder if we'll see them again?" pondered Tessia.

The turian glanced at the datapad he had been carrying, displaying command's praise over their efforts but adding their disappointment over the destruction of the reaper device; "Hard to say, the operations are wide-spread across the galaxy… but we may cross paths again, who knows where this war will take us."

.***

In the Widow system, a fleet of reapers slowly approached the Citadel, with the intention of relocating it to the Sol system…

.***

Rebecca was now alone with Scott in the medibay, her thought process lost for a moment, wondering if she should ask if he had heard her confession back on the shuttle.

"Urgh," sighed Scott, "I hate the boring recovery period. This battle is escalating and I need to be back out there kicking reaper ass."

Rebecca nodded, realising again that things were getting tougher in the war against the reapers and that her squad would soon be sent on even more increasingly dangerous missions.

There was a pause, that in Rebecca's mind, felt awkward and drawn out.

Tapping on her omni-tool, the engineer grinned; "This'll cheer you up."

Fido suddenly appeared, floating over Scott's bed.

"Huh?" pondered Scott.

The combat drone began to cycle through various colours from it's standard orange, while rotating to techno-music that began to play.

Scott laughed at the 'disco ball' idea he had suggested back in the reactor; "Yaaaaassssss!"

Rebecca was so busy laughing over Scott's delighted reaction, that she didn't notice his entranced gaze as he admired her cheerful features.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Scott holding out his fist towards her with a smile.

She mirrored this action, bumping her fist into his and Scott voiced a 'boom' sound, flicking his fingers out and pulling his hand away. Rebecca realised a second too late as she copied the 'bro-fist explosion', that such a movement matched one of her still very active omni-tool hand-gesture shortcuts.

An unguided overload caused Fido to vanish, a bedside monitor to explode, and the medibay lights to shut off with a spark.

"Whoa!" they both yelled out in surprise before two doctors and a security team rushed to their location.


End file.
